Every so often, I’ll go through my streaming services to look for gems, and for one reason or another, I check Amazon Prime the least. But check it recently I did, and lo and behold, there it was: the cult classic piece of 80s weirdness, Maximum Overdrive. It’s the movie where Stephen King directed his first and only movie, at a time when a new King adaptation seemed to pop up every few weeks, with a script by King, a soundtrack by AC/DC, and from Dino De Laurentiis’s production company.
Yeah, I knew what I was going to be watching that night.
According to the opening captions, the Earth was passing through a comet’s tail when it all started to go wrong. What exactly was that? Oh, machines of all kinds started to come to life, and they started to likewise attack and kill humans (plus a dog at one point). Or they were just being jerks since the first machine we see go bad is an ATM that tells a man (King in a cameo) that he’s an asshole. But as the movie goes on, more machines come to life, mostly in the form of large trucks, but not entirely. I mean, there is a killer vending machine that shoots soda cans at lethal force.
However, not every machine goes bad and neither does every person end up dead. At an out-of-the-way gas station and diner, a group of survivors are trapped, led for the most part by short-order cook Bill (Emilio Estevez), much to the consternation of his jerk boss Bubba (Pat Hingle). The remaining people there are a collection of mostly character actors with one or two familiar faces in the mix, most notably Yeardley “Lisa Simpson” Smith as a fussy newlywed, and briefly, Giancarlo Esposito as a guy who thinks he hit the jackpot when some arcade games start spitting out coins. But soon, the group is trapped by a circle of trucks, led by one with a Green Goblin face on its grill. Will humanity survive?
Now, I went through a big King phase in my 20s, and I actually remember reading the short story this movie is based on. It’s called “Trucks,” and in that story, the machines come to life are pretty much limited to trucks with the protagonist glancing skyward and fearing a plane flying overhead might also be working with the trucks. It was a memorable story, one where there was never an explanation given for what brought the trucks to life. This movie, however, gives one, and even tacks on a solution to the truck issue at the end that doesn’t involve any of the characters that had appeared on screen at any other point. Mostly, the movie follows a group of people who are trying to survive, and the ones that do are mostly the sort of characters we’d rather the trucks not kill, at least theoretically.
Because, let’s face it, this is a really bad movie. Even King has admitted it’s not very good, but I get the impression everyone involved knew that. The special effects are cheesy, the script is bad, and the acting is over-the-top at best. Smith’s character is maybe supposed to be comic relief, but for the life of me, how do I find one character funny when I can’t take any of them seriously? None of the characters seem particularly intelligent, and it’s really hard to care about any of them. Plus, since this is the sort of movie you really shouldn’t be thinking about too much, I really was wondering how exactly some of the dead were actually killed and if some of the killer machines actually could do the things the movie showed them doing. Like, I somehow doubt a soda machine can spit out cans at lethal force. I will give the movie credit for having it acknowledge that what machines do or don’t come to life is inconsistent and unpredictable, and while I don’t for a minute regret watching it just for the oddity that it is, I still can’t say it’s all that good.
Grade: C-
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