Movie Time Capsule Blog #7: Maximum Overdrive

You would be hard pressed to find a modern author with a larger filmography than Stephen King. As such it is not surprising that the films based on King’s stories range in quality from good (“Carrie,” “The Shawshank Redemption,” “Stand By Me,” and the movie everyone I know hates to love, “Pet Semetary,” which is currently getting the remake treatment from none other than executive producer George Clooney) to bad (“Cujo,” “Graveyard Shift,” and the made for television adaptations of “The Tommyknockers” and “The Langoliers”) to downright awful (“Silver Bullet,” “Hearts in Atlantis,” and the so bad I could write a book about it “Dreamcatcher). It is extremely hard however to find a book directly based on one of King’s stories that is merely mediocre.

In 1986 after numerous hits and misses at the box office already based on his material, King decided to finally step behind the camera and direct his first feature. Not only was he working from his own story, but from his own script as well. Unfortunately, King decided it would be a good idea to adapt his story “Trucks” from the short story collection “Night Shift” for his directorial debut.

Despite the “gee whiz I’m just so darn happy to make a movie” optimism and the “I’m going to beat your fucking ass if this movie doesn’t scare you” narcissism exhibited in the trailer, the truth is that you couldn’t get King to talk about this movie today if you tried and once I actually did.

I attended a young writer’s conference in high school and the guest of honour chosen to speak to the class was Stephen King. Each of the thirty students was given fifteen minutes with King to talk about whatever they wanted in regards to writing; one on one with no outside interference. King had even looked over some of our writing in advance, and when it came to my turn with one of the masters of modern horror, I almost froze.

King had in fact read my short story, and I can’t for the life of me even remember what I submitted. All I know is that it was a vaguely violent coming of age story that I have long since lost. Apparently it was pretty good because King said it felt a lot like the characters from “The Body” (which was later made into “Stand By Me”) had grown up slightly and found themselves in a Robert Cormier novel.

So when the godfather pretty much gave my ego a lifetime pass, the first thing I did was geek out completely. I told him about how I wrote a screenplay for an action movie when I was twelve that was completely ridiculous. People just drove around with guns and grenades in the trunks of their cars and single people could take out a S.W.A.T team just by using intricately placed “Home Alone” style traps. I told King that when I read the screenplay I was so proud of to my mother she found the whole thing to be really far fetched with enormous plot holes. I told my mother, who was an enormous King fan and completely jealous that I was getting to meet him, that if they could do such things in a movie like “Maximum Overdrive” I could totally get away with it in my movie.

King laughed heartily before almost whispering, “God what a mess that was. So terrible.” I asked him what the inspiration for the movie was and his response was “Lots of alcohol and cocaine, mostly.” I could have kept going on about it, but I didn’t really know where to go from there. I could have laughed, but this man also has enough money to have me shot, eviscerated, and then have all of my internal organs shot execution style as they lay splattered all over the floor in a pool of viscera and my own urine.

King’s past bouts with drug and alcohol abuse are well documented. Even the advance money he received from his first novel, “Carrie,” pretty much went towards fuelling his habit. In past interviews, King has said he barely remembers making large parts of “Maximum Overdrive,” and has pretty much disowned it quietly; dismissing it as a “moron movie” in his own words.

To make matter worse, King might have bitten off more than he could chew by making such a technically demanding film his debut. A movie that centres around machines that have run amok requires a lot of special effects know how and King had never even really had any remedial exposure to any of the technology used on set. A driver was injured severely when a car flipped over in the middle of a chase sequence, and the director of photography had to leave the film after a lawnmower that was used for a scene ran over a piece of wood and embedded splinters in his eye. The D.P. sued for ten million dollars and the case was quietly settled out of court for an undisclosed amount of money.

The film tanked upon its release at the box office and King was nominated alongside the film itself at the Razzie awards because the premise of the film is admittedly quite laughable. I didn’t even realize it until just before writing this article, but the DVD must have recently gone out of print as well. So really what more can you say about a movie with killer trucks and an all AC/DC soundtrack?

The movie starts the same way it will end; with a title card explaining why everything is happening the way it is. Apparently the world is caught in the... um... well, it has something to do with a comet circling the earth for the next 8 days, 5 hours, 29 minutes and 23 seconds. How scientists are able to calculate such a number, I will never know, but apparently this comet just loves to fuck with people. The first scene before the opening credits features King himself as an ATM user who couldn’t look any less conspicuous if he had a handlebar moustache.

Then just to show how out of his league as a director King is, we are treated to a scene where a drawbridge goes up on it’s own and truck and a motorcycle both fall into the river below in hilarious slow motion. The whole movie is filled with random, pointless slow motion shots but none are as hilarious as the ones that open the film. Nothing on this bridge is safe as every car piles on top of one another (including an AC/DC decorated van, whose music plays over this sequence) and watermelons roll all over the place.

From there we are transported to the Dixie Boy truck stop just outside of Wilmington, North Carolina. The Dixie Boy is pretty much what every writer from Maine would believe a highway truck stop would look like in the south, minus the soul crushing racial tension, of course.

Emilio Estevez plays a short order cook working at the Dixie Boy as part of the terms of his parole while his good ol’ boy boss continuously screws him out of his paycheck simply because he knows Estevez can’t quit or he will be sent to jail. There is also a motley crew of workers and customers to add to the local flavour. Despite being a movie about trucks and appliances trying to take over the world, it is this very local flavour that threatens to derail the entire movie.

King has described his books as the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries. While I am not disinclined to agree with him, if his writing is a Big Mac the dialog he writes for his characters is the equivalent of the ghastly dehydrated onions and overly acidic pickles you find at McDonalds. In his books King uses an almost archaic dialect that I never once heard someone use in New England. People would describe their headaches as a “king sized bangaroo” or bemoan that their life is “S.S.D.D.,” meaning “same shit different day,” but everyone has to use the acronym for it.

If King can’t write realistic dialog for characters in a book (where you can often get away with such ridiculousness) set in a place where he has lived his entire life, transporting the same story to the South is a recipe for disaster. The characters in “Maximum Overdrive” are so down home they utter such phrases as “I don’t give a ladybug,” “Horsepucky,” and “I cain’t get pea-turkey out of it.” What the shit does any of that mean? I can pretty much figure out horsepucky, but the rest of it doesn’t make sense at all.

Oddly enough, Estevez plays the only smart person at the Dixie Boy, mostly because he can form entire sentences and is pretty much derided for it because it makes him seem like a college boy to everyone. Naturally when the revolution of the trucks happens he becomes the group’s de facto leader. Everyone in the movie pretty much assumes that the world is coming to an end and basically sits around for the next hour or so as group of out of control semis and what appears to be a gantline gun attached to some wheels and plywood circle the Dixie Boy and peg people off one by one.

Come to think of it, this movie has almost the exact same plot as the most recent King adaptation, “The Mist.” A bunch of people are trapped in a building (in that one it is a supermarket) and they can’t leave or they will be killed. It didn’t really dawn on me until just now. The only real differences are the setting itself, different characters, and the tone of the film. Other than that, when you boil it down, it is the same basic story.

Part of this movie’s charm comes from the fact that every time a machine malfunctions and tries to kill someone, it is accompanied, by the most awesome musical sting in the history of motion pictures.

Whether it is someone getting diesel in the face...

...someone ranting and raving about how an electric knife bit her...

...or this infamous scene that had to be trimmed to avoid an X-rating involving a child getting run over by a lumbering steam roller...

...that goofy wailing guitar remains constant. It is undoubtedly one of this movie’s saving graces.

Estevez devises a plan to get all of the survivors (including Yardley Smith from “The Simpsons” and previous MTC subject “Three O’ Clock High” as a newlywed who can’t seem to stop talking and hyperventilating) to Haven Island where conveniently enough electricity has been outlawed. Well, that is pretty awesomely convenient that Estevez should know about such a place, but what is even more convenient is how they intend to leave without getting run over or shot at.

Apparently, Emilio’s boss has a massive stockpile of army grade weaponry under the Dixie Boy. Why? Because he is a white, southern male and they all do. It is their dag-gum-doodily-oodily-God given right to have fucking rocket launchers, land mines and grenades. This was exactly the kind of ludicrous deus ex machina that I used in the screenplay I had written and told King about during my meeting. If you have a bunch of people in trouble and you can’t find a way for them to get out of it, conveniently have what they need right under their noses.

Under cover of night, Emilio’s army make their way to the marina “Dawn of the Dead” style and armed to the teeth, but not before giving a rousing speech that describes exactly what is going on in the movie, since mostly everything in the movie has to be explained with some of the worst expository dialog in movie history:

“It isn't the comet. It's a broom. Imagine you're a race of aliens, right? And, you're looking for a new place to live. Say you're looking for a planet like you and I looking for a new place to live. A new house. So here's Earth. Only it's like this big old house. And, it's kind of polluted, dirty, and smoky. Grease on the walls, soot in the chimney. So, they send in their interstellar housecleaners. Send in their broom. Sweep us all up. That's what this it is, it's a broom. Using our own machines to sweep us right off.”

Fucking college boy.

Once they leave the Dixie Boy the movie turns into Carmageddon. Trucks and cars follow our intrepid band of merry men and women on their journey almost relentlessly, led by the movie’s most indelible image: The Happy Toyz semi truck with the infamous Green Goblin face on the grill. It is admittedly a pretty bad ass truck, and it made me wonder if I could instil the same fear in a person’s heart if I were to construct a semi with Willem Defoe’s face on the front of it; not as the Green Goblin, just Willem Defoe’s face.

After a trip where some people live, some people die, and they are almost ratted out by a fast food order box screaming “Humans here!” before Emilio emotionally opens fire on it, they arrive at the marina and the movie ends just as it began. With a title card saying the comet was really an alien spacecraft and that the Russian’s shot it down with some nukes and everything went back to normal. Oh really? Gee, Steve thanks for explaining everything to us. For a minute there I was afraid this movie wasn’t going to make any fucking sense.

Ultimately, the movie doesn’t really succeed on a good or bad level. I will say that for an inexperienced director, King does a pretty decent job filming the action sequences and chases when he isn’t trying to use ridiculous camera tricks or rely on slow motion. The actors don’t seem to be taking themselves too seriously, especially Smith who seems like she is always a few seconds away from popping a blood vessel. Estevez seems to almost be poking fun at himself and his image with a performance that only Patrick Swayze could love.

The film still works on a so-bad-its-good level given all the little details. It is a movie about killer machines, but King knows that isn’t good enough. He gives almost all of the appliances and vehicles a personality decidedly their own. The Green Goblin truck has more personality than any of the people it is stalking. You also have to give credit to any movie that kills people using the modern conventions that people depend on every day. I didn’t even mention the hairdryer strangulation, the rapid fire vending machine, the ahead of it’s time walkman electrocution, or the washer and dryer that seemingly walk down the street. Even the all AC/DC soundtrack gives the movie a special kind of feeling; almost like this was a movie put together by a huge fan of the band who only owned one album.

Despite all the cheesiness, I can’t entirely recommend “Maximum Overdrive.” I have always had a problem with King’s dialog to a certain degree and in this movie it is just too much to handle. Every time someone opens their mouth, I just want to cringe. Not only do these people sound unbelievable and unconvincing, but the dialog explains every single last detail of the movie. It sounds annoying and makes the film almost boring to watch, especially in the film’s middle hour where little to nothing happens.

The gaps in logic are also far too much to comprehend even for a movie of this calibre. For example, the trucks don’t bother to attack the Dixie Boy until towards the end of the movie, but if they wanted everyone dead they could have just as easily ploughed through the building. Also, if the trucks can’t hear, how would a talking order box be able to shout directions to the trucks? The comet doesn’t seem to affect every car, either as some are clearly able to still be controlled by their owners. The movie tells you its logic, and then flies in the face of it for the sake of the story and making shit look cool. It’s almost as if King didn’t even believe himself as he was writing it.

“Maximum Overdrive” was even remade in 1997 under the story’s original title “Trucks,” but the remake holds none of the original’s charm or wit. Neither version has been remembered all that fondly. Come to think of it, I don’t know a single person who saw the remake. King has pretty much decided the film be best left forgotten, and even fans of cheesy horror films don’t readily talk about it unless it is brought up, but astoundingly the film does have an audience amongst a select group of people: auto enthusiasts.

If you were to look up “Maximum Overdrive” on the internet or YouTube, you will find fan made videos from clips of the film that showcase only the cars and trucks used in the film. You will find people discussing the vehicles at great length and commenting about how awesome they are. I even know a high school auto shop teacher who swears by the movie and even showed it to a class once to see if his students could pick out the makes and models just by watching the movie.

These are the kind of fans that a movie nerd like myself could get behind. Their anal retentive attention to detail is admirable. They talk about how they love the hum of the diesel engines and discuss at length how these trucks could possibly get from point a to point b in x amount of time to make the film’s logic ultimately work.

But ultimately, even these fans can’t fully defend the movie.

Verdict: Middle of the road