The horror writer's sole directorial work is a masterpiece of so-bad-it's-good cinema.
Alright, hear me out: Maximum Overdrive, the 1986 horror flick about sentient semi-trucks that terrorize a North Carolina town, is a damn fun watch that needs to get added to your queue immediately. If you’re already aware of it, you’ve probably heard stories of its troubled production, or maybe you’ve seen clips or stills of the film’s primary antagonist — a toy-filled semi-truck with a giant Green Goblin mask fixed to its grill. You probably know it's not very good, and you probably know that it was a big enough critical and commercial failure for its director, horror legend Stephen King, to never return to the director’s chair again after its release.
But listen: this is an outright essential for enthusiasts of bad movies, and it belongs to be binged alongside other campy horror classics like Killer Klowns From Outer Space and C.H.U.D. It’s got a bit of everything — blood, gore, violence, a staggering series of comically brutal deaths, a heroic Emilio Estevez (fresh off his role in The Breakfast Club and Alex Cox’s Repo Man) and a brief bit role by future television icon Giancarlo Esposito. What else could you possibly want? And, hey, if you weren’t previously aware of King’s sole directorial work, buckle your seatbelts...it’s time.
Beginning with an expositional title card explaining that Earth has passed through the tail of a rogue comet that covers the planet in an inexorable green mist, Maximum Overdrive practices no hesitation in regard to jumping into its unhinged insanity. A man (Stephen King) is called an asshole by a rouge ATM. A bridge malfunctions, opens wide, and sends motorcyclists and other drivers sprawling absurdly into the water. A soda vending machine shoots a machine gun-like volley of cans at a baseball coach’s crotch, then continuously shoots him in the head at point-blank range, killing him on the spot. This is just the beginning, and it only gets more preposterous from here. As the body count steadily rises, it quickly becomes clear: these are some damned villainous machines.
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Maximum Overdrive is a movie that is as ridiculous in execution as it sounds on paper. Semi-trucks, becoming sentient and wreaking revenge on their human masters? How could anybody of sound mind make such a flick? Well, the thing is, King wasn’t of sound mind. Fans of the author know that the man has had a long struggle with substance abuse, with his coke addiction being brutal enough to inspire him to write Misery as a metaphor for the way it held him captive, and he heavily drew upon his own alcoholism while writing The Shining. Maximum Overdrive, based upon the author's short story "Trucks," was shot when King was at his coke-iest, with the author claiming the production to be an unmemorable blur lost among the cobwebs of his perpetual high. Stories have passed around about King’s drug-addled direction, culminating in the injury of the film’s DP, Armando Nunnuzzi (the esteemed Italian cinematographer of over 100 films). In a scene where a lawn mower goes rogue and menacingly revs its blades at a passing young boy (Holter Graham), King insisted on leaving the blades in the mower (although the crew affirmed that they weren’t necessary), causing a wood splinter to launch into the eye of the cinematographer.
Injury aside, Maximum Overdrive is too outlandish to be anything but comical. As semi-trucks begin to form a posse that drives threatening circles around the gas station where the film’s characters are held captive, the movie indulges in the sweetest kind of camp. Actors toss about hammy line deliveries of melodramatic proportions. “We made you!! We maaaaade you!!” a waitress (Ellen McElduff) cries in despair at the mechanical assailants during one scene, before meeting a gruesome fate. Once you realize that the film’s antagonists really are trucks, steamrollers, arcade games, and meat trimmers, there’s nothing to do but succumb to the sweet, absurdist romp that the film gleefully takes itself down. When Bill (Emilio Estevez) and company arm themselves with rocket launchers and take to blowing the suckers to smithereens (at a gas station mind you, which seems like an egregiously dangerous place to be launching off goddamn explosives) all bets are off. Semi-trucks are blown sky-high, strange messages are decoded by a boy scout, and the machines’ insidious intentions are revealed to a cast of characters that seem to accept it all as if it were simply a matter of fact.
Of course, a movie like this makes little sense. It doesn’t need to, and, quite frankly, it doesn’t want to. In one scene at the tail end of the film, Bill muses paranoid theories that the malicious machines are controlled by extraterrestrials in order to wipe humans from the planet. Is this the truth? Or is it all simply the doing of that comet...and that massive green cloud that nobody seems to be very concerned about? And while we’re asking questions, why’s it that only certain machines go rogue, while others — like the vehicle driven by newlyweds Connie (Yeardley Smith) and Curtis (John Short) as they attempt to escape an assault from a particularly vicious truck — remain perfectly functional? In the long run, these are just minor squabbles that are best ignored, for this is a narrative indulging in the playful, senseless logic of a young child crashing Hot Wheels and Tonka trucks into dolls and action figures, mimicking the sounds of deaths and explosions with their mouth.
There’s plenty about Maximum Overdrive that might remind viewers of another of King’s works, Christine, which was adapted into a film by horror auteur John Carpenter. Like King’s directorial work, Christine is about a killer vehicle that racks up bodies like nobody’s business, but where Christine is rescued from a tragic car-crash status by a strong aesthetic, as well as Carpenter’s inherent skill as a filmmaker, Maximum Overdrive has little keeping it on track. It skids along, barely coherent, with plot points tied together vaguely enough to produce a competent narrative. That’s part of the fun. Where these characters go, how they react (sensibly or not), and how the machines that are fixing to murder in cold-blood (or, cold-oil?) conjure inventive ways to kill them is anybody’s guess. King seems to be making it up as he goes along pulling each step of the plot out of his hat at random.
In a film that begins with the words “Fuck You” flashing on a digital banner hanging above a bank, one has to question: did anybody care about this movie? It’s said that the film’s director abandoned interest once his preferred lead, Bruce Springsteen, declined to star. That “Fuck You” is clearly meant as a cheeky gag, but it also feels intended towards the audience and the film itself in the sort of way that’s void of care. Besides, King might not have gotten The Boss to star in his movie, but he got AC/DC, his favorite band, to craft its soundtrack.
“A lot of people have directed Stephen King novels and stories...aaaand I’ve finally decided if you want something done right, you’ve gotta do it yourself,” King says, suspiciously wide-eyed in the movie’s trailer. Yep, it’s a claim made even with Creepshow, Carrie, and The Shining (which King notoriously detested), three of the finest adaptations of the author’s work, all being released years before Maximum Overdrive. “I’m going to scare the hell out of you,” King says to the camera later in the trailer, practically reaching through the screen to point at the audience. Spoiler alert: he doesn’t, although he does end up entertaining the hell out of anybody daring enough to watch his movie.
Throughout a career of selling hundreds of millions of books that have inspired dozens of cinematic and television adaptations, the fact that King ultimately only directed this one work is a bit disappointing. Yes, it’s bad, and yes, it has the scare factor of...well...a honk-crazy evil-minded 18-wheeler, but so what? This is a sweet cinematic treasure of blood and gore, an R-rated treat that’s as comfortable flattening children as it is splattering bodies into the freshly-bloodied grill of a truck. There also allegedly exists an extra gruesome X-rated cut, which features more gut-wrenching violence that made horror icon George A. Romero “sick to his stomach.” If this edit’s ever uncovered for audience enjoyment, please sign me up for release day tickets!
Maximum Overdrive is a movie that should be shared many late nights amongst friends, where the hilariously grotesque deaths can be pointed out with much enthusiasm. Its dialogue is cringe-worthy and absurd (“you make love like a hero,” Brett (Laura Harrington) purrs after hooking up with Bill), one of many quote-worthy quips exchanged between characters. The special effects are so corny they’re comical, with that damn green cloud of who-knows-what having no visual believability, even for outdated '80s technology. And that truck...the one with the Green Goblin mask (such likeness being officially licensed by Marvel comics, as the closing credits tell), is that really the primary antagonist, the film's main villain? It might be the leader of the pack...it at least seems to be, but it's pretty hard to tell for sure, considering it can't talk. If it's supposed to be scary, like actually scary, like the trailer promises, like Jack Torrance threatening to smash his wife's head in with a baseball bat, if that's the type of scary it aims to be, then it fails miserably. It's goofy as all hell, but scary? Come on!
King's film joins the ranks of the unscary scary movies whose failed attempts at conjuring horror conjure deep-rooted belly laughs instead. Through it all, it's bad enough to be good in the right mindset. It's hilarious when it isn't supposed to be, fun when it's supposed to be frightful, and as it throws logic and plausibility to the wind, it becomes a delightfully bizarre trip. The squealing, thunderous riffs of AC/DC only highlight the absurdity of the film's attempt at scares. This isn't a haunted house, it's an amusement park, with silly little pop-out figures of ghosts and ghouls giving half-hearted attempts at giving a good startle. Unsurprisingly, the film was critically panned upon its release, earning it two Golden Raspberry nominations (it lost both to Prince's Under the Cherry Moon). The result is a delicious feast of camp, trashiness, and ridiculous violence that's infectiously entertaining.
There’s so much absurdity about Maximum Overdrive that its production is nearly as interesting as the movie itself. Apart from Nunnuzzi’s eye-piercing injury and King’s heavy drug use, it’s rumored that Romero ghost-directed a significant portion of the picture while its credited director was unable. Eagle-eyed horror fans spot specific Romero trademarks—like specific editing and other filmic technics—throughout the film, citing them as ample evidence to confirm the auteur’s involvement. Either way, should the credit go to Romero or King, the result is the same: Maximum Overdrive is a deliciously campy disaster that’s completely worth your time. Fans of classics of the so-bad-its-good ilk can rejoice: there’s enough here to keep your gut-busting for a good hour-and-a-half. And sure, one could take the route of literary analysis to logically suggest that it’s a film about our destructive reliance on oil, or global warming, or the way that technology rules our lives. At the end of the day, though, this is just a movie about killer monster trucks. It’s a drug-addled fever dream that makes no sense, and it’s an absolute blast.
Watch it some late night with friends or family, then watch it again. It’s just too damn fun to ignore.
Adam Grinwald is a Feature Writer at Collider. He is passionate about films of any and every genre, especially foreign flicks. With a degree in English Literature, he spends much of his time reading and writing. As an undergraduate he published a work of fiction in Furrow literary magazine.
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