Maximum Overdrive (1986)
Directed by Stephen King
When a comet passes close to the earth, machines all over the world come alive and go on homicidal rampages. A group of people at a desolate truck stop are held hostage by a gang of murderous 18-wheelers. The frightened people set out to defeat the killer machines…Or be killed by them.
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What critics compared Maximum Overdrive to
While countless novelists have written screenplays, it’s extremely rare for one to also direct a film version of his own work — the only two I can think of off the top of my head are Norman Mailer (“Tough Guys Don’t Dance’’) and Stephen King (um, “Maximum Overdrive’’).
Every writer thinking they'd be better off directing their own book should sit down and watch Maximum Overdrive, Stephen King's embarrassing 1986 directorial debut—and, to date, his only attempt at feature filmmaking .
Imagine Stephen King’s “Christine” and “Maximum Overdrive” with nothing under their hoods.
Sure, his association with earlier films like “Maximum Overdrive” and “Christine” didn’t help the box office, but it gave the movies a decent buzz.
It began quite well, actually, but what Stephen King film doesn’t (except King’s directorial debut “Maximum Overdrive,” which stunk like a dead sewer rat from frame one)?
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Frankly, Maximum Overdrive, the cheesy Stephen King epic from the eighties, paints a more terrifying portrait of technology gone wrong than in the bizarrely bloodless Pulse, which feels roughly like a somnambulistic version of a camp movie yet to be made (think �I Was a Teenage Internet Zombie!�).
It captures the macabre playfulness and irreverent energy that have long drawn audiences to the author’s work, earning its place alongside Creepshow (1982) and Maximum Overdrive (1986).
Some are sprawling prestige dramas (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile), others lean into psychological terror (Misery, Gerald’s Game), and then there are the delightfully deranged oddities (Creepshow, Maximum Overdrive).
…with something like Dolores Claiborne on the less-fun and more angry at dad end, and Maximum Overdrive at peak ’80s nose powder excess…
As a grindhouse thriller, Unhinged is of a piece with auto-mania of the past like Duel, The Hitcher, even Maximum Overdrive.
Its first half-hour echoes the severe lousiness of Maximum Overdrive , King’s first and last director’s job, a clunky reworking of his riveting short story “Trucks”.
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Thenagain, this is his first film, and it's a lot more accomplished than Stephen King's directorial debut, "Maximum Overdrive."
As for the horror-meister's lone foray into directing his own work, the 1986 truck-monster saga "Maximum Overdrive," the less said the better.
It's not news to anyone that Steven King screen adaptations get tossed into two categories: absolute crap (Maximum Overdrive, Cujo, Pet Cemetery, et.