‘Maximum Overdrive’ (1986) Review | Kung Pew Edition

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Over on Kung Pew Video, I’ve been revisiting the direct-to-video relics that raised us. This week: Maximum Overdrive

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Stephen King in the Driver Seat

What do you get when you give a coked-out Stephen King eleven million bucks and tell him to go make a movie?

Maximum Overdrive.

And you know what? I’m glad somebody was crazy enough to trust a completely untested director with a feature film. 

Because look at what we got.

Killer trucks, Emilio Estevez, and AC/DC cranked up so loud nobody cared that none of this makes any damn sense at all. 

It’s goofy, loud, and the absolute pinnacle of ’80s insanity. 

So as we continue our Halloween season here at Kung Pew Video and ScreenAge Wasteland, pull up a lawn chair, and let’s talk about Maximum Overdrive.

The Back of the VHS

Not only did King helm this ship of fools, he wrote it too. Adapting his short story “Trucks” from Night Shift, Maximum Overdrive blended horror, humor, and sci-fi to create a strange slurry that feels both like King and like something a bizarro version of King would write. 

After Earth passes into the tail of a comet, machines begin going crazy, attacking and killing people.

A group of survivors finds itself trapped at a truck stop along a stretch of highway in the middle of North Carolina. Among them is Bill Robinson, played by Emilio Estevez, an ex-con working as a short order cook for the truck stop’s a-hole owner, Bubba Hendershot.

Outside, a convoy of trucks circles the building, waiting for…well, nobody really knows what for.

The Comet Connection

Now this is the second movie I’ve reviewed this month where a comet wreaks havoc on the planet. The first was Night of the Comet. If you’ve never seen that movie, we’re talking valley girls, zombies, a love letter to movies, and everything drenched in 80s neon. I’ll link the review but I can tell you it’s a strong recommend. 

Giving the Villain a Face

Now the thing everybody remembers when it comes to Maximum Overdrive is the rig with the Green Goblin face on the front of the cab. And I don’t think that’s just because it’s a comic book character. I mean, even without the Spider-Man associations, that image is iconic and indelibly tied to this movie. 

And as I was rewatching the movie to prepare for this review, I even wondered if it would be the 80s classic it has become without that truck and that face. 

You’d still have the killer soda machine, video games, electric carving knives, and 18-wheelers. You’d still have Emilio Estevez–even though Stephen King wanted Bruce Springsteen for the role–yeah, imagine The Boss squeezing this squirrelly movie in between Born in the USA and Tunnel of Love–anyway, you’d still have him, and you’d still have the music of AC/DC. But that grinning, green face, man. 

That image is the thing that let us all know what we were in for. 

And the face isn’t just in there to sell tickets. 

It has a purpose. It personifies the machine menace. In the same way Schwarzenegger breathed life into the hyperalloy endoskeleton of the T-800 terminator, the Goblin face created a recognizable character among the dirty, drab semi-trucks. 

And the design endured well after the 80s had disappeared into everyone’s rear view. 

While I was rewatching this, it occurred to me that the ice cream truck that chases Deke could’ve inspired Sweet Tooth from the popular Playstation video game series Twisted Metal.. So I did a quick search to see if anyone else had made that connection. 

Turns out, Maximum Overdrive did inspire Twisted Metal’s creators, but it was the Goblin face that inspired the face on Sweet Tooth’s roof. It had nothing to do with the My-T Tas-T ice cream truck that chases Deke in the movie, which is just kind of crazy to me. 

But that’s not the only legacy the Goblin head prop left behind. 

There’s a featurette in the Vestron Video Collector’s Series BluRay that details how video store owner and fan of the movie, Tim Shockey, found the original prop, restored it, and now drives it around to conventions all over the country. Anyway, it’s worth a watch if you can find it. Tim did a fantastic job, seems like a cool guy, and he seems to get a ton of joy showcasing the prop for adoring fans. 

  Truck Stop People

But Maximum Overdrive isn’t really about the machines. Like most of King’s work, the machines-gone-crazy plot is just an ant farm to drop characters in, shake up, and see how they behave under stress.

And once all the characters reach the Dixie Boy, Maximum Overdrive basically becomes a siege movie.

And I like these kinds of stories. Hell, I like most movies that take place mostly in one location, whether it’s GlenGarry Glen Ross or Dredd. The confined space gives the action some constraints and the characters a practical problem to work on together. Who emerges as the leader? Who freaks out and makes things worse? And who surprises you? 

For me, in this movie, the answer to that last question is easily found in the character of Curt, the newlywed husband, played by John Short. When we first meet him and his wife Connie (played by Yeardley Smith), Curt doesn’t seem like the sharpest knife in the drawer. He comes across as a bit of a wet blanket. But once these two reach the truck stop, Curt really comes out of his shell. The guy practically leaps to help Estevez’s Bill rescue the Bible salesman. And I think Short does a pretty swell job of conveying a current of nervous fear running beneath his bravery. He’s scared. But he’s doing the right thing anyway. 

And I appreciate that kind of ordinary bravery getting some time on the big screen, especially from a character that looks like he arrived from central casting to play the timid, little twerp who fouls things up at critical moments. That’s something I think we need more of in movies nowadays. 

His wife Connie, on the other hand, man, that woman needs a muzzle.

Smith certainly delivers a memorable performance. But my God, that voice gets a workout. And so does Curt’s (and everyone else’s) patience. 

The rest of the cast is stacked with familiar faces, too. J. C. Quinn from Prayer of the Rollerboys, CHUD, and The Abyss plays truck stop attendant and father to Deke. Frankie Faison plays the driver of the Green Goblin truck–he also turned up in CHUD as well as Cat People and Coming to America. Giancarlo Esposito, probably most recognizable from Breaking Bad and The Mandalorian nowadays, plays a guy who gets electrocuted by a game room. And Leon Rippy from Moon 44, Universal Soldier, and Stargate is one of the diner customers. And then there’s Pat Hingle as Hendershot. Now he’s a jerk, don’t get me wrong. But his character is actually one of my only problems with the movie. 

At one point, he uses the rocket launcher he keeps in the basement of his truckstop to cover Bill and Brett as they rescue Curt and Connie from their wrecked car. It’s totally out of character for him, and it could have been a great character arc for him to go from a slimy, greedy guy out for himself to a guy who looks inside and finds some humanity maybe he didn’t even know was there.

Unfortunately the cast and the movie skip past this act of selflessness, and just continues to treat him like the asshole he’s been for most of the movie. And it’s almost like you can see Hendershot shrug and go “Okay, I tried. Guess I’ll go back to being the asshole.”

Our Heroes

That’s the supporting cast, but our heroes and the two people we’re meant to experience this crazy world through are Emilio Estevez as Bill and Laura Harrington as Brett. 

These two meet when the fit is just starting to hit the shan, but that doesn’t stop them from falling instantly in love with each other. But that’s okay. I’m not gonna nitpick a movie where a soda machine murders most of a little league baseball team within the first 15 minutes.  

Besides, Estevez and Harrington have good chemistry together and, well, Harrington is just hot in this. Even if you don’t buy them falling head over heels immediately, they are perfectly cast and work well enough on their own as characters. 

And one thing I really like about movies from this era is that actors used to look like normal people. Sure, Harrington is sultry and almost always covered in a fine sheen of sweat, but she looks like a person you could actually meet in a truck stop at the end of the world. 

Practical Effects

Another thing I really like from this era of moviemaking is the use of practical effects. And there’s at least one practical effect in this that is so convincing I was asking myself who in their right mind let Stephen King drop a bunch of cars into the river from a real drawbridge. 

It’s a crazy scene and it’s super effective, but apparently it was achieved through a combination of methods: a miniature bridge with miniature cars, a full-size hydraulic bridge section, and footage of the real bridge.

And knowing all that makes me appreciate it even more.

You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out, King

Now remember how I said some lunatic let King sit in the director’s chair? Well that person was Martha Schumacher working under the Dino De Laurentiis production banner. She was also a producer on several other King adaptations, including Cat’s Eye, Firestarter, and my personal favorite werewolf movie, Silver Bullet. And she would later go on to marry DeLaurentiis. Armando Nannuzzi served as cinematographer and also filled that role on Silver Bullet. 

Strangely enough, Nannuzzi lost an eye working on Maximum Overdrive during the scene where the lawnmower is chasing the little league player, Deke, played by Holter Graham. According to the crew, they tried to get King to remove the mower blades for safety, but the master of horror wasn’t having any of it. The mower hit a piece of wood that had been used to prop up a camera and flung a splinter into Nannuzzi’s eye. He was airlifted to a hospital, but wound up losing the eye. And the really crazy part? He came back and finished the film. But he later sued King and De Laurentiis for 18 million, settling for 975 thousand.

Don’t Ask Too Many Questions

And the movie itself isn’t without its flaws. 

For one, why are the trucks circling the truckstop? If they want to murder everyone inside, why don’t they just drive through the truck stop and run them down? 

And there isn’t a whole lot in the way of character development. We can root for Bill and Brett. Hendershot, the bible salesman, and Connie are people we’d probably just as soon avoid if we could. But over the course of the movie, nothing much changes in that regard, and no one really gets a character arc. 

Mostly, King just keeps the pressure on them, keeps things moving. Which works to keep us from asking too many questions. But it limits how much we can relate to these people, and that might be where King’s work really struggles to translate to the screen. 

In his novels, he takes loooooong detours into elaborate backstories for his characters. Some people hate that. I happen to really like it. It gets you invested in the characters, and usually the backstories are interesting in and of themselves–even if they don’t move the plot forward. 

But despite these minor flaws, the movie is an effective piece of popcorn entertainment. The setting is gritty and real and fun, and I like watching this group try to deal with the chaos of King’s ant farm scenario. I like the growling sounds the trucks make when they get blown up. And the AC/DC needle drops keeps things revving on the redline. 

That Ending

But there is one thing I would change, and that’s the movie’s epilogue.

After the gang gets safely aboard a boat, we get this explanation about what happened. Something about a UFO being destroyed by a Soviet defense satellite and then an assurance that Bill, Brett, and the rest of the survivors…survived. 

It’s like this movie’s version of And they lived happily ever after. 

And I just don’t think the movie needed that. I think it would have been much cooler if we just watched em head out to sea and then the credits roll. It would’ve left us wondering if the world eventually went back to normal or if maybe the Dixie Boy gang is still out there on some island off the coast of North Carolina, eking out a living while Bill and Brett busy themselves trying to repopulate the earth. Heh.

Final Thoughts

So should you watch Maximum Overdrive? I’m betting if you’re reading this, you’ve probably already seen it. But if you somehow missed this one, I think it’s a lot of fun and definitely worth spending an hour and a half with on a Saturday night. It’s got a recognizable cast, explosions, some not too scary kills, a fun setting, that cool Green Goblin truck, rock n roll, some great practical effects, and a ridiculous premise about machines run amok–that doesn’t give two craps about sticking to its own logic. 

Despite some goofiness, this is one of those movies I just have to revisit every couple of years. Usually around October. And every time I do, I have an absolute blast with it. 

Man, the ’80s were a helluva decade.