When you’re making a movie about a demonic 1958 Plymouth that has a mind of its own and starts slaughtering teenagers, everyone involved risks looking like a giant idiot, even if it is a Stephen King adaptation. Unless John Carpenter is directing. He can sell this shit. He can make it eerie and weird. He loves making us watch the whole widescreen frame for something to emerge from the background or from one of the corners. Carpenter also has the clout and the work ethic to get in an amazing special effects scene in which the hopelessly totaled car repairs itself on screen with dazzling 1983 practical effects (it’s like they were competing with Rick Baker’s werewolf transformation in An American Werewolf in London, except with a car). Still, it’s not a great movie. Its pivotal characters are personality-free slasher bait. There’s The Pretty Girl, The Sensitive Jock and The Bullies. And while Keith Gordon breaks a respectable sweat in the lead role as The Dork of the Year who turns into a smoldering psycho under the influence of his haunted vintage car, Carpenter seems mostly disinterested in him. Gordon’s character is a pawn, not very scary and handled with little humor. No, Carpenter has the most fun with his supporting cast of older character-actors. They’re all great. Scary-eyed Roberts Blossom (just the name Roberts, with an “s” is kind of creepy) gets to be his usual old hayseed whose stench and dark secrets poke at you like a pitchfork through the screen. The beyond grizzled Robert Prosky steals his every scene as the foul-mouthed junkyard owner with a face like a piece of long-rotted fruit and a personality to match. Last but not least is Harry Dean Stanton as a police detective who pushes around these kids with effortless authority. They’re buried in the middle and back end of the credits, but they’re the real stars here.