Alright, we all knew this was coming sooner or later. I could only look away for so long. It's one thing not to have read Salem's Lot, but not commenting on Stephen King's directorial debut and swan song would be truly unforgivable as the Stephen King examiner.
Yes, back in 1986 Stephen King took an opportunity to direct a feature film. In it, cars, as well as machines in general, come to life and exact revenge on their human masters, killing them mercilessly in cold blood. How did the movie turn out? Meeeh, critics weren't fond of it. It was nominated for two Razzie awards (one for Worst Actor: Emilio Estevez and one for Worst Director). Here's the thing though, King's film, Maximum Overdrive isn't a film that you can apply deep cinematic analysis to like you could to say the Godfather movies or Pan's Labyrinth. This is one of those so cheesy it's awesome movies. Like Batman: The Movie, Army of Darkness, Tron, Howard the Duck, and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (all movies I staunchly defend) it's a movie that you get a bunch of friends together for, grab a beer (or your beverage of choice), sit back, relax and just enjoy the movie for what it is. With that take in mind, the movie's pretty fun. The deaths are over the top and cartoony.
The movie hardly qualifies as horror, but King took a different take with this. It's a throwback to cheesy sci-fi movies of yesteryear. For crying out loud, the cause of the machines coming to life changes. It starts off being explained by radiation from a passing comet, ok that's fine, but at the end they say that a UFO was responsible for it and the machines were the prelude to an imminent invasion by an unseen extraterrestrial race. Given how intricate some of King's novels are I doubt that this was an accident on his part, more likely it was deliberate to make us all laugh.
Aside from the film's so bad it's awesome quality, the movie does have some things that make it a bona fide classic. The first is the now iconic Green Goblin truck. Why do I call it that? Because the grill has a giant head of Marvel Comics character and Spider-Man nemesis Green Goblin on it. Do they ever explain why it's there? Nope. Do I care? Not particularly, it's awesome and that's all that matters. Besides, seeing that green face with its maniacal grin approaching you from your rear view mirror is much more frightening than some plain old boring truck.
The other reason why this movie rules is because the entire soundtrack is AC/DC music. James Rolfe pointed this out in his video talking about the film. King himself is a big fan of the band. AC/DC is one of the bands he listens to while he writes. He is also a big Guns N' Roses fan as well as a fan of Metallica. So, not only is the guy a great writer, he's got great taste in music as well.
They also got Pat Hingle into the cast. If that name sounds familiar it's the actor who played Commissioner Gordon in the Burton/Schumacher Batman movies.
While the film was initially blasted, it seems to have developed a following. It even managed to get nominated for an International Fantasy Film Award the following year. Like Cloverfield, this is one of those movies where your mileage may vary. I, however, get a kick out of movies like this. If you haven't seen it yet, definitely give it a rental if you're a King fan or a fan of awesomely cheesy movies.
Stephen King adapted this film from a short story he wrote called Trucks.
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