Carpenter does Stephen King's story of the car from hell and manages to provide a reasonably entertaining movie - but there is absolutely no tension and it is not in the least bit scary. Very average indeed and one has the right to expect so much more from the creator of Halloween, The Fog and Assault on Precinct 13.

There are some nice scenes along the way, especially when Christine fixes herself up after a serious roughing up and one or two other isolated moments. Carpenter doesn't quite manage to strike a balance between loving nostalgia, comedy and horror in Christine and the film fails in each respect. It isn't at all frightening and nor is it particularly humourous. It does however succeed in evoking memories of the Rock'n 'Rollin 50's, an era clearly rather special to Carpenter's generation, and why not!

Sadly, Christine, was the beginning of an alarmingly rapid downward spiral - a wretched curse that he has never recovered from. It seems that as soon as Carpenter started making movies "as a job" rather then for the love of it, he lost it altogether. Halloween is one of our five all time favourites of all time, regardless of genre.

Assault on Precinct 13 is another masterly Carpenter creation and The Fog, likewise has grown into a masterpiece of its kind, after that I am afraid its all Christine, Vampires, In the Mouth of Madness and so on - only Snake Plissken and Escape From New York was marginally better. It is difficult to imagine that the man who directed Halloween is the very same man who gave us turgid crap like John Carpenter's Vampires! Carpenter's tragic loss of form is a massive loss for horror buffs the world over. Yet he will always retain a very special place in the Horror Hall of fame as the director of the magnificent Halloween.