Welcome to B-Movie Enema. This week, we’re going to the mid-80s for the slick-looking horror flick Maximum Overdrive. It’s kind of impossible to talk about this movie without mentioning three things a lot of people who know about it knows (and possibly the main reasons that draw them to it). The first is that this movie bombed fairly hard and was almost unilaterally disliked by critics and a whole lot of the audience. Okay. Fine. The second thing was that this featured a pretty bitchin’ soundtrack from the Australian rock superstar group AC/DC.

But, come on… The third is the biggest reason why most watch this movie. That would be Stephen King. By 1986, King was about as big of a name in American literature as anyone else. In 1974, he released his first novel, Carrie, which was immediately brought to the screen in 1976 by Brian De Palma. With each subsequent novel released, ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, The Stand, The Dead Zone, and so forth, King was selling like hotcakes. Most of his novels up to this point were adapted into movies as well. King hasn’t often had a great deal of appreciation for the movies made from his movies. Notably, he hated Stanley Kubrick’s version of The Shining.

At the height of his power, King decided he wasn’t going to write a book and then sell the rights to someone only for them to make a movie he wasn’t satisfied with. Instead, he would make his own film. This was the only film King ever directed. He does admit that he had no idea what he was doing and he was railing on cocaine most of the time anyway, so he barely even remembers anything about the production.

I’m sure there are plenty of people reading this who know a hell of a lot more about Stephen King than I do, so I’m not going to half-ass anything here and just say that Maximum Overdrive and Stephen King, for better or worse, are attached to each other when it comes to film history. One last thing I’ll say about King is that this is based on one of his short stories that was called “Trucks” released in 1973. I figure I should just stop talking about King now while I’m ahead since I’m not too intelligent on the topic of Stephen King.

There is a pretty interesting cast in this movie. Of course, the cast is led by Emilio Estevez who was hot off movies like Repo Man, The Breakfast Club, and St. Elmo’s Fire. Again, he’s someone else I figure most people recognize. Beyond him, Pat Hingle, who played Commissioner Gordon in the 80s and 90s Batman movies. There’s a young Yeardley Smith playing a girl named Connie in this. Smith has been the voice of Lisa Simpson since the Simpsons’ early days of being on the Tracey Ullman Show. Giancarlo Esposito has a small part in this for you fans of The Mandalorian and Breaking Bad.

The most interesting person in the title, playing “2nd Woman”, is Marla Maples. Yeah THAT Marla Maples. As in the ex-wife of the president who shall not be mentioned. As in the mother of Tiffany – the daughter often not mentioned. You know what I’m saying.

As for me, what I remember most about Maximum Overdrive, being a kid and a comic book reader in the 80s, is that bitchin’ truck with the Green Goblin’s face slapped right on the front. It’s a fairly iconic image. It’s the type of prop/character/whatever you want to call it that when you see it, it immediately screams to you “MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE!” But also, because I was a kid, there was some stuff with kids getting mowed down that I could remember that really sat poorly with me (again because I was a kid), but we’ll see if I really do remember that properly or not.

Aaaaaand why not dive in and see if I remember the Green Goblin truck running down kids correctly or not!

I ain’t gonna lie, every time I see that De Laurentiis Entertainment Group logo rise up on the screen, I expect it to go right into the Vince DiCola beat and Unicron to come along and eat some robot people’s planet and fill me with the joy of watching The Transformers: The Movie all over again. Alas, it’s only Maximum Overdrive. Now, I have a sad face. This shit is the same year too and even starts out in space! Where’s my Unicron?!?

So, yeah, Maximum Overdrive begins in space because, on June 19th, 1987, the Earth apparently passes through the tail of a comet. Then, Stephen King shows up to get some money out of one of those new-fangled ATM dealies. The machine calls him an asshole again and again. I feel like I might also call him an asshole by the end of this movie too. Anyway, we may not have Vince DiCola score or Lion’s version of “The Transformers Theme”, but we do have AC/DC’s bitchin’ “Who Made Who” song that would go on to become the name of the album they released to feature the music from the movie.

All over the place, we see machines acting on their own. Heavy machinery does its own thing. Bridges rise despite giving drivers a green light to pass over them. One guy’s truck is right in the middle of the two bridges, so as the bridge rises, it lifts his truck up to the point that he can’t get the traction to get on one side or the other. Then, all hell breaks loose. More cars and motorcycles are affected by the bridge’s angle. There’s even a mishap with a truck carrying watermelons that people slip around in and fly through their windshields. It’s mayhem.

Our hero arrives at a truck stop, and, no, I’m not referring to Emilio Estevez. It’s the Happy Toyz truck with Norman Osborn right there on the front. Now, this is where most of our movie will remain. Emilio Estevez, playing Bill, is a short-order cook at the truck stop. Pat Hingle plays the guy who runs the truck stop. He’s a massive dick. He wants Bill to work for a full nine-hour shift, but only clock in for eight. He holds Bill’s parole over his head. In fact, most of the employees at the stop are parolees, and are being taken advantage of by Pat Hingle.

Slowly, machines are starting to do some pretty shitty things. One guy is trying to fill the Happy Toyz truck with diesel, but when it shuts off by itself, he thinks it’s clogged. It waits to spray fuel into the guy’s eyes when he’s looking straight down the barrel of the handle. The game room starts spitting quarters out all over the place and Giancarlo Espisito is there to cash in – until one of the arcade games fries him when it touches it. The waitress for the diner at the truck stop is attacked by an electric knife that cuts into her forearm and foot.

Oh yeah, so remember when I said that I thought there were kids getting mowed down in this movie? Well, I thought it might be a baseball team that was killed. Well, here we are. So a little league team wins on a big, dramatic head-first slide into home plate. Coach decides to reward the kids with colas all around. He puts money in, and nothing happens. Then, the machine starts spitting out cans and brains him (literally, I think we’re supposed to think his brain is exposed from his forehead wound). Then it starts shooting drinks out at all the kids, knocking out, and possibly even killing, some.

But don’t worry, some kids get away on their bikes, right? Womp womp… Bikes are machines too so one kid gets tossed off his bike and a steamroller comes barreling into the baseball diamond and runs over the kid and squishes his head like a grape! This bothered the hell out of me as a kid. I played little league too! I liked colas. I had a bike. I liked the idea of the having fun and the just being kids and the doing the fun things. I hated this scene because these kids were basically helpless.

As an adult? That kid’s head squishes awesomely. That’s something I actually laughed out loud while watching. One kid, Deke, does get away. However, this does leave me with a question. Deke got away on his bike. So when the kid got bucked off his bike, was that because it is a machine, or was that just the kid hitting a divot or something in the ground?

We next meet Brett, a lovely drifter who hears on the radio that something is going on, and wants the lecherous bible-thumper driving her to pull off at the truck stop. There, almost everyone witnesses the Happy Toyz truck nearly kill her and the driver. Andy, the guy whose truck it is, reveals he’s had the keys the whole time so, if someone was in the cab, they had to be an expert at hotwiring. We also meet newlyweds Curt and Connie (Yeardly Smith). They need gas and pull over at a gas station. They get attacked by a tow truck that also killed the attendant. They are able to escape and head back onto the road.

I do appreciate that the really iconic and menacing “hero” machine of the movie, the Green Goblin truck, is a toy truck. It even has jack-in-the-box in the cab that has that Green Goblin face on it. It’s a visage that doesn’t exactly promote happy times and fun and what have you. Yet it is the literal FACE of this toy company. That’s awesome and it does feel right in line with King’s twisted sense of humor.

One thing from behind the scenes that I want to bring up I think does help this movie in its tone. As Deke rides his bike back to his picturesque suburban home, we see bloody machines and dead people and dogs and what have you. It has a little bit of a zombie apocalypse feel to it. In some ways, it reminds me a little bit of what life outside the big tower in Romero’s Land of the Dead looked like. Desolate, wrecked, and lifeless, but it’s also seemingly quiet until a roaming ice cream truck comes along and forces Deke to have to hide or the lawnmower that comes to life to chase him away. I wonder if some of that comes from the comradery that King kind of filled the crew with. It’s said that he was always keeping things light and fun on set and even rented out a whole theater so everyone could watch Night of the Living Dead or Godzilla together and just have a fun time. I love that he was maybe overly kind to his crew and cast.

In some ways, that does play out in these early scenes too. These people feel like regulars at this diner and truck stop. When Brett goes up to Bill and tells him that she thinks he’s cute, there’s more than just a line read here. There’s a familiarity between actors Estevez and Laura Harrington that feels kind of earnest – if not kind of unrealistic. Then again… There’s a lot of unrealistic going on here. I’ll circle back around to that in a bit.

We’ve got Deke out in the world where machines are turning against their creators. But what about his family? His dad is the guy who got the diesel fuel in the eyes earlier. He wants to go find Deke and get him someplace safe, but he’s not doing so great vision-wise. He’s also not doing so great face and brain and body-wise either.

The trucks are starting to pile up a kill count. Shortly after killing Deke’s dad, that bible-thumper that brought Brett to the truck stop starts yelling at the trucks, but the Green Goblin truck backs into him and literally knocks him out of his loafers when it kills him. Back out on the highway, Curt and Connie are noticing a lot of semi trucks going down the highway in the opposite direction. They are attacked by a truck that they barely get away from.

This leads them to the truck stop where they see the trucks there circling the property. Curt spots a gap between two trucks and plans to shoot it to get to the diner. They just miss it and Bill and Brett have to go help Curt get Connie unstuck and in the diner. That’s when Pat Hingle pulls out a fuckin’ rocket launcher.

Apparently, not only does Bubba have a rocket launcher, but he also has a whole crate of rockets. He blows up another truck and then just goes back into the diner. I have to wonder if the decision to not blow up all the trucks was so that the rest of the movie could happen.

Anyway, thankfully we have Brett around to give us a title. She was planning on hitching her way down to Florida. I guess I should say this takes place in North Carolina. That’s why everyone has broad Southern accents. But she says that was her plan until every machine went into maximum overdrive.

Bill grills one of Bubba’s employees, Joey, about where he got the rocket launcher. Apparently, Bubba has a whole damn arsenal in the basement of the truck stop. Now, before you ask why there would be such a thing you have to remember some key things. First, this was an 80s movie. Even romcoms had basement arsenals in the 80s. Second, this is America. Duh… We all have basement arsenals even today. Third, this is North Carolina. That’s what we call a “red state”. That means there’s probably a second, larger arsenal under that arsenal.

After the sun goes down, and after Bill and Brett fuck, they notice the eerie green glow in the sky. Brett says she thinks it’s the comet causing all this trouble. The comet will be fully gone in about seven days. So, just stay alive that long! He even comes up with a possible idea. He knows of an island they can go to that’s about six miles off the coast. He has a boat that has no motor on it. The island itself doesn’t allow any motorized vehicles on it whatsoever. She thinks this is a pretty darn good idea.

I don’t know so much about Wanda June, the waitress that got sliced by the electric knife earlier. I do know s+he is drunk on a 40 of Miller High Life. She starts going on and on about how we made them. She even goes outside and has one of the all-time greats in overacting moments as she screams “WE MADE YOU!!!!” along with some other things that I couldn’t quite make out. It’s kind of great but in one of those “this is really dumb and shitty” sort of great ways.

It turns out that the bible-thumpin’ bible salesman is not dead after all. It seemed as though he was killed by the Green Goblin, but he was simply knocked out and injured. He’s woken up and he’s been groaning and moaning and crying for help. Curtis and Bill go to rescue him by using the plumbing system to get to the drain where he was dumped. Additionally, Deke is trying to get into the truck stop as well, so he used a drain pipe that was further out and ends up getting to the bible salesman first. At first, Deke thinks he’s dead, but the guy suddenly pops up and tells the kid to pull him to safety or he’ll kill the kid. By the time Bill and Curtis find Deke, the bible salesman really has died so ultimately, they didn’t really succeed in anything except they did accidentally save Deke.

The next day, some of the trucks circling the truck stop come to a stop. They make space for a bulldozer and what looks like a little military four-wheeler with a machine gun on it to come in. The bulldozer clears up some of the charred remains of one of the trucks that took a rocket. It then pushes Bubba’s car into the diner. Bubba blows up the bulldozer and the military vehicle uses the machine gun to start blasting some of the people in the diner. Wanda June takes the rocket launcher and goes out for a second round of “WE MADE YOU!” talk. She gets blown away too.

As we start to get into this final reel of the movie, the vehicles begin communicating with the survivors. Deke figures out the Morse Code that they are using. They demand someone come out and fuel them. They promise no one will get hurt, but if they refuse, then everyone will die. Bill decides to be the guy to go out and fuel them all up.

I do like that when he gets out there and tells the Green Goblin truck that he’s got the good shit that’s practically uncut, he then calls the truck “fuck face”. Brilliant.

So everyone spends the day taking shifts refilling as many trucks as they can. At one point, the truck stop even runs out of diesel gas, but I guess it’s good that one of the trucks was an actual gas truck that could allow them to refill the lines. During the day, some of the people figure out a plan to escape. First, Bill has to use a grenade to blow up the vehicle with the machine gun. Second, everyone is going to use the pipe that Deke originally tried to get into the basement of the truck stop earlier before he was forced to go to another pipe that led him to the bible salesman. They clip the gate off the exit of the pipe and they escape. Shortly after, the trucks start to realize that things are a little too quiet so they start wrecking the truck stop.

The remaining people of the Dixie Boy Truck Stop make their way on foot to the marina where they plan to paddle their way to the island that Bill mentioned earlier. They have to be careful because any machine that can will warn any other machines that humans are present. With machine guns they took from Bubba’s underground arsenal, they are able to blow up a drive-thru speaker and the ice cream truck from earlier that was hunting Deke. However, they are also being pursued by the Green Goblin truck.

The Green Goblin truck does take one causality as one of the survivors sees a really big diamond ring on a dead woman and stops to take it. The truck runs him down, but Bill blows it up with the rocket launcher. It… it gets blown up pretty damn easily all things considered.

And because this is Stephen King, he fumbles the bag right at the end by just having a bunch of people make it to the boat, and sail off to safety while telling us some bullshit about how everything is resolved.

I am of two minds on Maximum Overdrive. On the one side, there are some decent elements here. I like the idea that these people are trapped in a diner with circling big rigs surrounding them. That alone is an interesting concept and it feels extra scary because these trucks are so large and imposing and feel unstoppable. Plus, there’s this whole other element of how much we take our machines for granted. In a sort of way, I guess you could say Maximum Overdrive does have a bit of the Frankenstein’s Monster story to it too. We created these things and now they are acting out against us. These are concepts that are worth looking at. What’s more, this is juuuuust campy enough to be a fun time. I like that everyone is basically a caricature of people from the South. I mentioned earlier that I like how these people feel like they’ve known each for a bit. There are lots of things to like about the movie.

On the other side of that read, this is not a very good movie by any means. It’s too long to be this simple. This does have that Night of the Living Dead feel to it where you have these people dealing with something they don’t understand or know, but in that classic, we got to know each character’s motivation and they all played to some sort of archetype. In this movie, the same could almost be said, but the problem is there are a lot of other people around that prevent us from really being able to see those best fleshed-out characters actually interact in meaningful and conflicting ways. It’s a good short, or, maybe, a really good 75-minute movie. It’s not a good 100-minute movie.

Then, to end it with just saying, “Oh yeah… By the way, it’s a UFO. They were using our machines to clear the way for them to come down and take over. Have fun with that surprise we dropped on ya!” But here’s the thing about that too… We were offered two explanations in two different ways. Brett was the one who mentioned the comet. Okay, a comet’s tail is kind of an interesting culprit. I can accept that. Bill had a scene where he wondered out loud if it could be an alien attack. I like that fine too. There’s something to play with there. So, we already have two competing theories. But the final caption card talks of the Russians blowing up a UFO AND a few days later Earth passed through the tail of the comet as predicted

So… What is it? Was it the tail with the aliens taking advantage of that or was it aliens manipulating the tail or are these things unrelated? The title card is unnecessary because you could leave it as a strange occurrence that nobody understood in the long run. We’re better off not having that title card and not having a definitive idea about what was going on. Just leave it as some think it’s the comet and some think it’s UFOs and let it be.

Still, I do like the first half of this movie a lot. The second half seemed to drag too long and had an overstuffed cast that got in the way of allowing some characters to act and react based on their archetypes more directly with the other main characters. King had a good idea, but it just kind of got bogged down with its own weight.

Next week, it’s time to cover a movie that maybe doesn’t truly belong here on this blog, but I’m doing it for a very specific reason that will reveal itself later on. The year is 1975. The movie is The Stepford Wives. Be sure to be back here for that and, in the meantime, try to figure out who made who around here.