“Who made WHO? Who made YOU?”
It’s been a while since we’ve talked about our good friend Stephen King. And it’s also been a while since I basically tossed my popcorn at something that’s totally ridiculous. Thankfully, the Maine Maniac is here to provide! It was quite literally made on enough crack to shame Pablo Escobar, it’s a total mess, it’s Maximum Overdrive!
It all starts with one of King’s eleventy five thousand short stories, ’Trucks’. Like a lot of King’s stories, the impression it leaves is probably greater than the sum of its content—and having read it, it’s not a bad one either. The premise of technology becoming animated and malevolent is weird but for something this concise works well enough—and I did like the ending, which paints a picture of humanity reduced to a dwindling workforce for its new mechanized masters. In our world of AIs and algorithms watching your every move, it’s certainly one that feels closer to home than you may think—as Pearl Jam would put it, it’s all about doing the evolution, baby.
So how does it work when translated into a feature length film? Erm…very abortively! First of all, this is the only adaptation of his that King chose to direct himself. This was also around the time when he sustained himself on more yeyo than mere silly things like food and drink. I mean, just look at the trailer:
You see, kids, sobriety is in fact entirely optional to success.
The film starts off with a comet somehow causing pretty much anything powered by a circuit to start rebelling in the most destructive way possible. How? Why? Who cares! King was having fun slamming pickups and cars together while completely coked off his ass, and that’s the main thing you should be taking away from all this. It’s like watching the chase scenes in Blues Brothers, but with any rhyme or reason stripped away entirely.
Alright, fine, there is in fact a plot…barebones and shaky as it is. Most of it focuses around a group of people, ranging from angry shouting rednecks, to different types of angry shouting rednecks, to hapless nobodies, holing up in a truck stop as it soon becomes besieged by a parade of motorized monstrosities rebelling against their fleshy once-masters. Characterization here is expressed mostly by people shouting at each other, and as it turns out, King’s attitude to the highest notes of emoting is to define them as ‘flail your arms while screaming’. I wonder if any of the cast here put that on their talent reels. Still, I must admit, when a little tipsy, there is definitely some stupid fun to be had when some of the rednecks pull out bazookas that they have in the basement, because, well, what else is the second amendment for right. And there is of course the ‘main’ truck that for some reason has a fully animated Green Goblin face—does that make a cameo in No Way Home? Well I damn well hope it does!
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| To be fair if I did see this thing coming at me and talking like Willem Defoe, I probably would in fact desert all sanity. |
What else does the film have? Well, most of the soundtrack is provided by my favorite rockin' pack of Aussies—AC/DC! Yes, I must admit, for classic hard rock, I accept very few other substitutes. My apologies to the Aerosmith and Van Halen fanatics I happen to know, but in this area, the boys from down under take it for me. Even now, they provide just the right antidote to today's autotone-addled Imagine Dragons crap you get on the radio. It may not leave you thunderstruck, it may have been a dirty deed done dirt cheap, but that alone elevates the beer-fuelled entertainment value by at least several notches.
There’s even one scene where you have them belting the film’s signature song as a kid wonders down a suburban street left ravaged by the technological uprising. Real horror directors from around this time like Carpenter or Romero might’ve put on a creepy synth soundtrack, and with that, the scene would’ve actually been quite effective. But not King—no, he leaves you appreciating just how completely ridiculous the whole thing actually is, and hell, I must admit, I am myself left appreciating his taste in music at least.
Eventually, the film ends as it begins, with more rock and nonsensical plot development. It turns out the whole affair was caused by a UFO. Or maybe the UFO was a comet. Or something. By this point, you’ll have either switched off, or will be too drunk to care. All that matters is that King gets to obliterate another ten-wheeler with pyrotechnics, and then doubtlessly the crew got down to some wild partying that they’d end up sorely regretting both in the morning and twenty years later.
In the end, Maximum Overdrive is barely coherent, filled with acting that stretches the definition of the term considerably, and will probably leave you with a headache if watched sober…but it’s done with so much drug-fuelled gusto and gleeful rock chord-augmented mayhem that--I stress, with some beers--you can definitely peg it as perfect material for a cheesy movie night. King’s adaptations run the gamut from rightfuly celebrated classics like Shining, to just plain irredeemable like the Carrie remake—and in the middle, there’s crazed coherence-defying nonsense like this that might not leave you with anything in the way of substance, but it might just leave you laughing your ass off. But if you truly want a good movie themed around trucks, stick to Fury Road or Spielberg's Duel, because abandon all expectations of quality ye you enter with this one...
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