Maximum Overdrive (1985)
** (out of 4)
Stephen King made his directorial debut here and he hasn't yet gone back to the chair, which is a real shame. Not because he's got tremendous talent behind the camera but instead because he could have delivered so many more, campy, non-sense movies. MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE is as bad as it's reputation would have you believe but at the same time it enters the "so bad it's good" range because of how silly it all is. Based on King's short story 'Trucks,' what basically happens is a group of people are stranded inside a truck stop as the trucks outside start to take over the world and go on a killing rampage. This is the type of bad film that everyone should really check out because it's amazing to see how poorly the final product turned out to be. In recent years King has admitted that he didn't know what he was doing and that he was snorting cocaine at the time and perhaps this is why everything here doesn't make since. I think the original story has some major logic flaws but perhaps King just didn't explain them well enough here. I still think there are some very campy and outrageous moments that make this worth viewing and most of them happen early on as the machines start to come to life. There's a coke machine death sequence, which is just priceless and campy. Then we have a steam roller death, which I'm sure looked wonderful before the MPAA got a hold of it. While watching the film I kept wondering if there was any sort of point to any of this. The movie has a very bad pace and it really just seems to go on and on without anyone knowing where to stop it. I think taking out ten or so minutes probably would have also helped it. Seeing people like Emilio Estevez and Pat Hingle adds some charm but the majority of the characters are just annoying.
