Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
By Robert Scucci
| Published
I can’t think of anybody other than Stephen King when it comes to creators who go all in at times when they probably shouldn’t. I guess Nicolas Cage comes close, but it’s apples and oranges comparing an actor getting hired to bring somebody else’s vision to life and a novelist deciding he could direct a feature-length film like 1986’s Maximum Overdrive. While I don’t celebrate Stephen King’s entire catalog for no other reason than he’s more prolific than I’m willing to keep up with, I know his output is a mixed bag.
Then again, that’s the point of being prolific. For every cinematic adaptation of his work that lands, like Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining or Rob Reiner’s Miserythere’s a clunker like Maximum Overdrive.
Then again, again … Maximum Overdrive is such a tone-deaf and occasionally visually enthralling effort on King’s part that I can’t help but kind of love it. Make no mistake, this is a terrible movie based on a short story called “Trucks,” and the entire premise is basically “trucks go smash and so do vending machines, and stuff.” There’s really not much to latch onto here, but it’s so much fun. Heck, it’s even fun imagining how this movie was made.
While those who worked closely with Kubrick have gone on record about his process while making The Shiningwhich involved photographing scale replicas of the Overlook Hotel in his attempts to get the lighting just right, I’m imagining Stephen King on his hands and knees hovering over a scale replica of the Dixie Boy Truck Stop with a bunch of Micro Machines and Hot Wheels, making motor and explosion noises with his mouth. Probably in matching truck pajamas.
It’s actually beautiful.
Trucks Go Smash, And Emilio Estevez Is There Too
Here’s the entire plot to Maximum Overdriveand it’s probably the most concise rundown I’ll ever run on this site: “Trucks go kablam.”
That’s literally it.
There’s all this stuff about rogue comet Rhea-M and how machines become violent when Earth crosses its tail. But the only reason that explanation exists is because the idea of sentient trucks, vending machines, pinball machines, cash registers, gas pumps, and so on, wouldn’t otherwise make sense. What I don’t think Stephen King considered going into production for Maximum Overdrive is that none of this makes sense, and it isn’t supposed to.
“Trucks,” depending on the page format you’re reading, is somewhere between 16 and 25 pages long. There’s no comet. Machines just start going hog-wild, and a bunch of people in a diner have to deal with being surrounded by murderous motor vehicles. On its own, it’s an insane story, but its brevity works in its favor. You get the conflict without needing to think about the source of it because it’s just happening, and then it’s over. You get in and out quickly, saying to yourself, “Well, that was an ordeal!”
Maximum Overdrive suffers from the worst kind of bloat because Stephen King had to stretch the premise to a 98-minute runtime. We’re given too many characters, led by Emilio Estevez’s Bill Robinson, in an all-out war between man and machine. But The Terminator came out just two years earlier and set the bar far higher than Maximum Overdrive could ever hope to reach.
It’s Still Supremely Fun
As much as it sounds like I’m dunking on Maximum Overdrivea movie with a 14% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, I kind of love it. None of it makes sense. Everybody is acting super seriously because this is an official Stephen King joint, and he by then had serious clout as a writer whose work had been successfully adapted to film when in more competent hands. It’s meant to be terrifying and thought provoking. Instead, it plays like a grown man spinning in circles on his living room floor, throwing his Hess Truck through a Lego fuel station and pantomiming fireballs erupting from the field of play, like a child.
One of the earliest scenes in this movie involves a Little League coach suffering a fatal head wound after a vending machine launches rogue cans of cola at him. It’s bonkers. It’s gonzo. It’s a bunch of humans hiding inside a gas station while a convoy of trucks waits outside, hungry to kill.
Come to think of it, if we could get a version of this in 2026 with Nicolas Cage in it, I’d pay for D-Box seats. Still, you can watch 1986’s Maximum Overdrive for free on Tubi. Or you can do something else. Those are your options.
