Stephen King never should have been allowed to direct, but we have Maximum Overdrive in our lives anyway. It’s about how machines get minds of their own during a nine-day period in which the tail of a comet passes over Earth. And the movie is trash — occasionally enjoyable trash, but trash nonetheless.
If you were to judge Overdrive from its first 15 minutes only, it’d be an awesome spectacle of technology gone mad. A drawbridge opens on its own without warning, causing a major car smash-up and Marla Maples getting smashed by a watermelon. A steamroller bursts onto the field of a Little League game, shortly after the coach is felled by a soda machine violently shooting out pop cans like cannonballs. A waitress is attacked by an electric knife. A black guy gets turned extra-crispy by a video game.
But then there’s the rest of the running time to contend with, as fry cook Emilio Estevez and company — including Yeardley Smith, the voice of The Simpsons‘ Lisa Simpson, best heard and not seen — hole themselves up in a truck stop while the semis — including one with a Green Goblin face on its front grill — circle outside without drivers, awaiting fresh prey.
This is where Overdrive — remade for TV in 1997 as the inferior Trucks — downshifts into severe repetition, drawing out its scenario to the point where it ceases to be fun, even the mindless kind. Although I like the clever touch of the runaway ice cream truck eerily playing “King of the Road,” the bombastic AC/DC score is enough to make one pull out his hair. —Rod Lott
King has admitted the primary creative influence for this movie was his cocaine addiction. Without it, it never would have gotten made.
I remember seeing this on opening weekend, in Dallas, Texas.
King joyfully admits that he was coked out of his mind when he made the movie. I think his stock response to the question of whether or not he will ever direct again is, “Have you ever SEEN Maximum Overdrive?”
Benny Hill did a sketch along the same premise except there were more half-naked girls in lingerie bending over to pick up fallen flatware. It was much, much, MUCH beter.