| MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE |
 1986 - USADirected by: Stephen King
- Reviewed by Jennifer
Honestly, I think I would have felt better about Maximum Overdrive if I'd started watching it later at night. As it was, I turned it on at 8, and instantly realized that I'd descended into the sort of campy B-movie world best visited between the hours of 11 pm and 2 am. Like Deadly Friend and Critters, Maximum Overdrive is undeniably entertaining. It's just not very good. Based on King's short story, "Trucks", the film chronicles the mayhem unleashed when a passing comet brings the machines on planet earth to life. Hoo boy, when the machines come to life, you had better watch out. You could run to the pop machine after a little league game only to be pelted to death with Coke cans. You could be wielding an electric knife, and the next thing you know, it might be wielding you. Gosh, I haven't even gotten to the trucks yet. It's all really scary, but if you're lucky, a hot young Emilio Estevez will protect you. I often suffer moments of horror, wondering why exactly I loved Emilio so much as a teenager, but movies like this affirm my sanity. He looked darn good in 1986, and it's hard not to fall in love with this goodhearted hellion. Case in point: Gilbert Grape's sister. Laura Harrington plays a tough young hitchhiker who seeks refuge at the truck stop and in Emilio's arms. Rawr! An exceedingly young and even more irritating Yeardley Smith plays a young bride whose honeymoon is ruined by rogue semis. Her husband is such a big dork it's a wonder they survive on a good day. Pat Hingle rounds out the cast as the formidable bulldog of a truck stop owner. Oh! Don't miss Stephen King's Hitchcock-style cameo as a frumpy tourist tangling with a trash-talking ATM. Eventually our little refugees band together to fight the trucks, which are now circling the truck stop ominously. It's like Duel without a driver! I feel like biting my nails all over again! Why don't the trucks run out of gas, you ask? Because they keep demanding more! I must admit that I began to covet a certain very bad ass truck with green gremlin face on the front. All the random action and blaring AC/DC music in this movie must have awakened the teenage boy in me. As the people face down the trucks with a variety of schemes (and with varying degrees of success), we get to witness all sorts of exciting explosions. Sometimes the trucks explode, sometimes the people do, but it's all fun and games in Maximum Overdrive—especially when the explosions constantly take place before impact. An 18-wheeler drives off the side of a cliff and bursts into flames, having crashed into... nothing! A semi approaches a man, and guts fly out of the grill. Er, I mean, a semi savagely runs over a man, and blood spurts from his body! Yikes! I'm smiling just thinking about it, because there's no possible way you can take this silly, gory movie seriously. After a lifetime of watching Stephen King movies, and 14 years of reading his books, I would have to count myself a fan. There's a comforting, old friend quality to his work, but there's something slightly off about it too... Something along the lines of too much information, not enough finesse, and more dysfunction than is necessary. There's usually something that keeps you from wholly identifying with the characters, even though they're essentially sympathetic. Where Richard Donner or Jerry Bruckheimer might have smoothed out the rough edges, and made "Trucks" into a mainstream action thriller, King drives it straight to the campy horror section of the video store. It's not a bad thing, it's just his way. |
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Isn't it weird how other people can take a Stephen King book and turn
it into a poignant, timeless, and touching film (think Stand By
Me, The Shawshank Redemption, 