Seems like the '80s blessed us with a million trash bag exploitation movies like this one. Set in a hayseed truck stop on the eve of a week-long comet encounter, whose ensuing green aurora causes various mechanical devices to gain sentience and seek human victims, Maximum Overdrive is an obvious slab of VHS rental bait, sold more on the wacky concept and flashy cover art than the meat of the film itself. Stephen King wrote AND directed, his first (and so far only) credit behind the camera, although he was admittedly trapped in a powdery white haze at the time and rumors assert that frequent set visitor George A. Romero actually ghost-directed most of it. All the best parts are of the chunky, gore-wet variety, so the shoe does fit.
Overdrive's first half-hour is where it should begin and end; a hilarious stretch of hopelessly idiotic ideas and setups that sent me back to the days of sneaky, low-volume, late-night HBO marathons during my youth. Seven-year-old Sean would've alternately covered his eyes and goggled, dry-mouthed, at scenes depicting an evil soda dispenser, a rampaging steam roller, an electric knife gone rogue or a sinister wall clock, connected to a mangled corpse by way of a long, bloody trail. How did a clock kill somebody? Why did it hang itself back on the hook after it was finished? Such concerns are better left unanswered, I guess, because I still had an awful lot of them when Emilio Estevez and company finally escaped their captivity to kick off the credit roll.
AC/DC's accompanying soundtrack is both a hit and a miss; the tunes set this film apart from its contemporaries and lend it a coolness factor that's still fresh thirty-odd years later, but they're also bluntly shoehorned in because King was a fan and have absolutely nothing to do with the proceedings.
If you happen to catch it on cable, I suppose there are worse ways to burn a few minutes, but skip the second and third acts.
Review by drqshadowBlockedParent2021-03-04T18:59:53Z
Seems like the '80s blessed us with a million trash bag exploitation movies like this one. Set in a hayseed truck stop on the eve of a week-long comet encounter, whose ensuing green aurora causes various mechanical devices to gain sentience and seek human victims, Maximum Overdrive is an obvious slab of VHS rental bait, sold more on the wacky concept and flashy cover art than the meat of the film itself. Stephen King wrote AND directed, his first (and so far only) credit behind the camera, although he was admittedly trapped in a powdery white haze at the time and rumors assert that frequent set visitor George A. Romero actually ghost-directed most of it. All the best parts are of the chunky, gore-wet variety, so the shoe does fit.
Overdrive's first half-hour is where it should begin and end; a hilarious stretch of hopelessly idiotic ideas and setups that sent me back to the days of sneaky, low-volume, late-night HBO marathons during my youth. Seven-year-old Sean would've alternately covered his eyes and goggled, dry-mouthed, at scenes depicting an evil soda dispenser, a rampaging steam roller, an electric knife gone rogue or a sinister wall clock, connected to a mangled corpse by way of a long, bloody trail. How did a clock kill somebody? Why did it hang itself back on the hook after it was finished? Such concerns are better left unanswered, I guess, because I still had an awful lot of them when Emilio Estevez and company finally escaped their captivity to kick off the credit roll.
AC/DC's accompanying soundtrack is both a hit and a miss; the tunes set this film apart from its contemporaries and lend it a coolness factor that's still fresh thirty-odd years later, but they're also bluntly shoehorned in because King was a fan and have absolutely nothing to do with the proceedings.
If you happen to catch it on cable, I suppose there are worse ways to burn a few minutes, but skip the second and third acts.