“A lot of people have directed Stephen King novels and stories, and I finally decided if you want something done right, you oughtta do it yourself.”
(Stephen King in the trailer for Maximum Overdrive, 1986)
The cultural cachet of The Shining (1980) is familiar to everyone who has had fleeting exposure to American television, books or movies in the past century. The Simpsons referenced it, your mom loves it, and it’s the movie you put to the front of your horror collection to impress acquaintances. The only thing more fabulous than the reputation, weight, and criterion re-issues of said film is how much its original creator despises it.
By now, Stephen King has somewhat tempered his opinion, but in the years right after its release, highly quotable trash talk was readily available whenever a reporter was nearby. “I like everything Stanley Kubrick has done–except The Shining,” he said in 1986, in what I assume was a gruff Hulk Hogan talk-scream before dropping the mic and offering Kubrick the re-match of a lifetime.
Everything about the movie seems to grate on King: the hotel, the ghosts, the cinematography, even Kubrick himself. Possibly most egregious to King was (and still is) the portrayal of the Torrance family, presented at arm’s length like “ants in an anthill.” The aura of old goldminer creepiness surrounding Jack Nicholson spoiled his character’s descent into madness, whereas King wanted more of an everyman, somebody the viewer could relate to, someone who spoke to King’s own fears as a young father struggling with alcoholism. Recently he tore into the warping of Wendy Torrance (played by Shelley Duvall), calling the way her character was written in the movie to be outright misogynistic. If he had a chance, he said, he “would do everything different.”
This frustration finally culminated into a cinematic event. While he would have to wait until 1997 to fix the events at the Overlook Hotel, a chance to do right by his work appeared in 1986 with the completely unanticipated Maximum Overdrive. Based on his short story “Trucks,” it would be the first movie written and directed by Stephen King. In an interview remarkable for how few times he tries to scare his serenely unshakable host with loud noises, he explains his decision to move behind the camera after receiving so many letters from like-minded fans upset by The Shining, and, as he saw it, demanding accountability. Perhaps this outpouring of support was further evidence that only his interpretation of a story was the right one, and that only he could make real Stephen King movie. “I was curious–if I did it myself, what would happen? Would people say ‘you ruined it yourself’…?”
Or would they say: yeah, we knew you could do it better?
And so, he took matters into his own hands:
To have been alive in 1986, when Stephen King declared that finally, someone was going to do him right, by God, no more beating around the bush, no more soulless dead-eyed storytelling and obfuscation of the meat of the narrative. To have witnessed this advertisement for Master of the Macabre Stephen King’s Maximum Overdrive, a promise of “Maximum terror. Maximum King,” which sounds like a rejected slogan for a cobra themed roller-coaster. A “coked out of his mind” King directed a 98-minute film about possessed trucks with a thirst for human blood, complete with a 100% AC/DC soundtrack and the slaughter of an entire Little League baseball team, and he kind of liked it.
Did you see the trailer? Maybe you should watch it again. You’re cornered in a garage by this man, and he’s definitely going to scare the hell out of you.
This, admittedly, might not have been the most successful way to tell Stanley Kubrick to go fuck himself.
Maximum Overdrive opened on July 25, 1986, and ran for two weeks. Its opening weekend was to the tune of $3,205,644, an exact match to 2005’s pseudo-military fantasy Stealth, fittingly also about evil technology you could sit in. I think this actually speaks rather well of Maximum–it grossed as much, uninflated, as a movie with a much higher budget and Jamie Foxx would make nineteen years later.
Further accolades: according to “Box Office Mojo” it ranked number 34 out of the 39 movies attributed to the Stephen King “brand”, as far as gross profit. All together with me: NOT! LAST! It beat out contenders such as Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace (“God made him simple. Science made him a god. Now, he wants revenge,”) and The Mangler, the story of an evil laundry press. It currently has a 17% “freshness” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is 7% more than 47 Ronin has right now.
It is difficult to predict, when polling acquaintances, who has seen Maximum Overdrive and who has never heard of it. Bad movies are in, the same way pencil skirts and wool coats are, fashionable: they never are unpopular per se, but fade to the background of our cultural consciousness until someone makes a ton of noise about discovering them again. But Maximum Overdrive isn’t bad in the way Troll 2 is bad, or The Room: both of those movies lack any sort of narrative cohesion and you can tell, immediately, how much of a bad idea they were after the first scene. The effects are home-made, you have no idea who any of the actors are, and nothing, nothing makes any goddamn sense. Maximum Overdrive, then, doesn’t have the acid-trip logic or that extent of mouth frothing ridiculousness to enjoy widespread revival, but it does have a certain something. “It’s like Speed meets Christine mixed with Roadhouse,” is how I usually try to sell it. Its insanity is focused, convincing. It has charisma, it has style, and it is aggressively pleased with itself until the last frame. It has King, a master of telling stories about normal people in extraordinary situations, just doing their thing until a waking nightmare finds them.
So let me lay it on you: A classic example of Man vs Machine, Maximum Overdrive starts in outer space, and then fades into Wilmington, North Carolina. A comet has appeared, anything with an electric pulse is now hell-bent on revenge and, apparently, the subjugation (if not straight-up murder) of the human race. It is a premise rich with potential commentary on the hubris of humankind set against the fiery hellscape they have created; rich also with thick puddles of fake blood and spectacular vehicular stunt work.
Representing mankind, we have blue-eyed ex-con Bill Richardson, who stepped straight out of a John Mellencamp song to work at the Dixie Boy truck stop and diner. Emilio Estevez, fresh from The Breakfast Club, brings a generous amount of smoulder and a frankly impressive level of dedication to his role. This drive is shared by the other assembled mechanics, motorists and various North Carolinians that populate the Dixie Boy, who appear to have succumbed completely to the script with an energy expected from a much better movie. While Wanda June the waitress doesn’t exactly speak to me on a soulful level, I am pretty determined to see her recoup after being attacked by an electric meat slicer. Other notable MVPs include:
– Curt and Connie, newlyweds who Dukes of Hazard-style ramp their car (with AC/DC playing in the background) into the relative safety of the Dixie Boy after being menaced by a grizzled old tow truck. Connie is played to piercing perfection by a young Yeardley Smith, as if to make trivia for this movie that much stranger in the years to come.
– Brett, comely hitchhiker with a straight razor in her boot and a chip on her shoulder, who kicks a lecherous Bible salesman to the curb and dutifully takes on the role of tough-girl love interest (as AC/DC plays in the background).
– Deke, the lone survivor of a Little League team that suffers fatal blunt trauma injuries from a furious soda machine. After witnessing the only other player to escape the flying cokes get smashed to death by a steamroller, Deke rides his ten-speed to the Dixie Boy to see his father, who was unfortunately blinded, hit by a truck (to the sounds of AC/DC) and rolled into the basement. Deke has seen too much, too young.
Plus a motley crew of other diner folk and assorted truck drivers seemingly there only to provide oddly dubbed, redundant exclamations. Everyone speaks in hyperrealistic Midwestern colloquialisms, unflinchingly saying things like “champeen,” “shitsky,” and “pea-turkey.” Before Brett was forced to acknowledge the phrase “road twitch” as if it were a substantial insult, I was certain it was trucking lingo for taking too many uppers. But perhaps we are in one of King’s famed alternate universes, a la The Gunslinger, as suggested by one mechanic’s melancholy declaration that “The whole world’s gone tits-up.”
Indeed, it has. We see humans (and one German shepherd) mutilated by a chainsaw, hairdryer, Walkman, lawn mower, remote controlled car, electric meat slicer, pinball machine, steam roller, and, my favorite, a vending machine. The arcane logic of which machines gain sentience and which remain our mindless tools is unclear, as we watch two sets of characters drive their own cars (a Plymouth Fury and a Cadillac) without being sent careening into the guardrail or being strangled by their seatbelts. The semi-trucks can drive themselves, but as we see later, require humans for fueling. I’ve always hated people who nit-pick in situations like this, so I’ll just paraphrase Brett the Hitchhiker’s bitter reflection of misspent youth for you: It doesn’t matter, because the whole world’s gone into MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE.
The events that follow are insane and inevitable: the convoy from hell arrives and circles (literally, drives around in circles honking menacingly) the Dixie Boy, thinning out the weaker humans. After wetting their tires in blood, they demand nourishment through Morse code delivered by an army jeep with mounted machine gun. This is the climactic turning point of the film, and I think it encapsulates the serene mix of solid storytelling, batshit premise, and ludicrous over-commitment of Maximum Overdrive as a whole:
The sun blazes. A long line of thirsty big rigs stretches over the horizon, and our heroes set to the painful task of fueling the trucks, sopping sweat from their foreheads and squinting into the distance. They heave the hose and angrily twist open fuel caps, rebelling with stinging verbal abuse aimed somewhere towards the front tires, which again, I’m not sure how trucks hear but obviously that really sticks it to them. This happens again and again, until Bill is overcome with fatigue and must be helped, staggering, off the field of battle by Handy the…handyman. Voice weak and trembling, he pulls Handy close, and lays out the real issue, the ultimate difference between humans and tractor trailers that weigh several tons, are made of steel, and do not actually have brains or emotions.
Bill (dazed)
They don’t understand.
HANDY
What’s that. Billy?
BILL
How it is to get tired.
How a man gets tired.
“Hell’s Bells” by AC/DC plays in the background. Take that, Stanley Kubrick.
There is a lot to love in Maximum Overdrive, almost too much. I’ve left out the sub-plot of Dixie Boy owner and resident ol’ boy Mr. Hendershot, who exploits his ex-con staff for an extra five hours of work, or the ESP symbols that flash on the screens of the arcade games, or the rocket launcher and machine guns piled in the basement of the diner. The determined, if aromantic coupling of Brett and Bill set to boreal comet light. The aliens that were really behind the comet all along, shot out of place by an armed Russian satellite.
It bears repeating that King had never directed before this attempt. He made rookie mistakes that his crew was almost too embarrassed to call him on. He phoned up George Romero for advice about “this [180 degree] axis shit” and name-dropped David Lynch as somebody he casually consulted in mild bewilderment. Movie people brains just seemed weird to him, but he plowed through and welp, here it is, lawsuits for personal injury aside. In interviews, his demeanor is a giant Kanye shrug of remorselessness and acceptance.
For all of the weirdness, AC/DC, and misplaced self-importance, Maximum Overdrive remains a complete and interesting story. He wanted it to be fast, and the who-gives-a-fuck momentum prevents you from focusing too long on why, exactly, anything is happening. Genre movies are fun if you just give in, and one of the hooks that pulls you down into the world of these sentient machines are the people that dramatically announce their way through each brutal truck attack. The normal-person preoccupations and priorities of someone in danger, the relatable characters, are what I find most effective in his written work. It comes through here, too, and it’s no wonder that I can forgive the painful 80s everything in exchange for 11-year-old Deke’s Clint Eastwood glares, or Connie giggling under a tablecloth on her unconventional wedding night.
The Shining and Maximum Overdrive share nominations for the same Razzie awards, for Worst Director and Worst Actor/Actress. One is generally accepted to be good, the other is really not. I can understand how it might grind your gears (I’m not sorry) to see the butchering of your nearest and dearest celebrated, and then interred in the mausoleum of public memory. I can understand that what makes it to the page or the screen isn’t exactly what you wanted, and it drives you crazy with the urge to correct.
I’d like to take us to a point in the film where I feel the artist speaks to us directly on this subject. It might be reaching, but that fits in pretty well with the overall theme of Maximum Overdrive, so allow me this indulgence:
We’re in the diner, many hours into the siege of the Dixie Boy. Wanda June slams down her lukewarm forty and voices the bewildered denial of everyone in the darkened dining area:
“They can’t. We made them!”
She then gathers up her courage and swings open the front door, confronting the cacophony of horns and headlights. This isn’t right. It can’t go on any longer.
“YOU CAN’T. WE MADE YOU!” she screams, her hands jerking, body contorted with rage and confusion. For her impertinence, her claim to ownership of these beasts, she is riddled with bullets, a mixed but potent message.
Supposedly King now admits this to be the worst adaptation of his work. I see nothing to be ashamed of.
