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Review of by Rob C — 01 Mar 2011

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After a comet passes through the Earth's atmosphere, machines come to life and start claiming victims. Directed and based off Trucks by Stephen King, Maximum Overdrive is an ingenious and imaginative eighties horror film.

On the time of its release, the film was a box-office flop that put Stephen King on the map as one of the worst directors of 1987. A title that I also completely disagree with. As a youth, Maximum Overdrive displayed a cunning way of scaring the complete shit out of me; to put it bluntly.

The film doesn't have that effect on me now, but for a youngster of ten (I viewed it for the first time in 1991), like I was, it held considerable sway over my emotional well-being. Now whenever I watch it, feelings of nostalgia creep in and I imagine how my young mind grasped the whole concept of this film at that time.

A few scenes that I should give special notice too: the private plane mowed into the roof of a schoolbus, the dead attendant at the gas station and the bulldozer smashing a kid under its main roller on the baseball field.

It's rather enthralling how dark King's humor was when writing this film and is a testament of his wide imagination. Furthermore, to say he's horrible at what he does is incompetent; further signifying the masses close-minded nature.

Really? A film that has AC/DC gloriously grace its inhuman music all over its soundtrack---all the while making it that more menacing---has to be commended wholeheartedly.

This review of Maximum Overdrive (1986) was written by on 01 Mar 2011.

Maximum Overdrive has generally received mixed reviews.

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