Review of Maximum Overdrive (1986) by Bill M — 16 Aug 2017

Many questions pop up whilst watching Maximum Overdrive , the tale of a comet that causes earths technology (primarily trucks for some reason) one is "why am I watching this" the other primary question is "how can it be that Stephen King, one of the greatest writers in the history of the world, a man who can make you feel every detail and fully create and populate other worlds filled with detail, but cant direct a movie worth a shit"? in all fairness this is a very fun film, a monumentally fucking silly one, but a load of fun for the same reason, I honestly still cant tell if the film is in on the joke though.

One clue to this films baffling incompetence is in the behind the scenes stories, apparently King was at the peak of his cocaine addiction at this point and was also a full blown alcoholic, and looking at the movie with this info, it really does seem like it could only be the product of a dude high on coke.

The characters are garish, loud, obnoxious cartoons, the script sounds like it was written by a child and theres a truly strange, painfully dull, extended interlude where they refuel all the possessed trucks to appease them, a scene that is played weirdly straight, much like the rest of the film.

This is an odd disaster of a thing, misguided and stupid, even KIng himself referred to it as "a moron movie", but it really does play well as a beer and pizza movie, and some of the truck kills are nicely gory.

Plus you have a smattering of early, brief appearances from actors from two of the most iconic shows ever, Breaking Bad's Gustavo Fring himself Giancarlo Esposito, who gets killed by an arcade machine and none other than Lisa Simpson, Yeardley Smith, as a shill, aggravating character whom the movie fails to kill.

For real, how did this thing get made?