Review of Maximum Overdrive (1986) by Victor T — 21 Oct 2014

By the late 80´s, Stephen King was the biggest author around but King had always disliked the numerous Hollywood´s adaptations of his works, even though some of them counted with big caliber directors like Stanley Kubrick, David Cronenberg, John Carpenter, and Brian De Palma. But in 1986 King made his directorial debut because, as he said in the trailer, "if you want something done right, you better do it yourself", he "just wanted someone to make Stephen King right" and promised to "scare the hell out of you".

On June 19th, 1987, the Earth passed into the extraordinarily diffuse tail of comet Rhea-M and it stayed there for eight days. This astrological event gave life to inanimate objects which started to show a murderous behavior towards humans. We follow a group of survivors stranded on the "Dixie Boy", a truck stop and we witness their struggle to stay alive.

On his earlier adaptations, King blamed the directors of each movie for not understanding his work but in "Maximum Overdrive" there is no excuse as he served not only as the source material but also as writer and director but after this effort is clear that King should stay as an author and leave the movie adaptations to more capable people. The acting is abysmal with no absolute exception, the writing is cheesy and so over the top that you will be laughing during its runtime, the characters are so badly written that you won't even remember/care about their names, it never has a scary scene whatsoever, the story doesn't make any sense, it is a tell don't show and finally, King´s directing is filled with more than questionable choices, mediocre shoots and lack of any suspense. But even with those god awful elements, "Maximum Overdrive" is one of those films that's so bad its good thanks to its laughable over the top silly vibe which is established in the first 5 minutes, hilarious scenes which supposedly were "scary", a phenomenal "score" by none other than AC/DC and a creepy/hilarious "Green Goblin" truck which perfectly summarize this film: It tries to be scary but it turns out to be campy thanks to the lack of logic.

King promised "to scare the hell out of you", in the trailer, but instead "Maximum Overdrive" makes you laugh thanks to its B movie elements: campy vibe and over the top performances. It is by no means a good movie but it guaranties some laughs scored by AC/DC. He may be a fantastic writer, occasionally, but he isn't even a mediocre director/screenwriter.