Maximum Overdrive

As the Earth crosses the tail of a comet, previously inanimate machines suddenly spring to life; an ATM insults a customer (King in a cameo) and a bascule bridge rises during heavy traffic, causing all vehicles upon the bridge to fall into the river or collide. Chaos sets in as machines of all kinds begin attacking humans. At a roadside truck stop just outside Wilmington, North Carolina, an employee, Duncan Keller, is blinded after a gas dispenser sprays diesel in his eyes. A waitress, Wanda June, is injured by an electric knife, and arcade machines in the back room electrocute another victim. Employee and ex-convict Bill Robinson begins to suspect something is wrong. Meanwhile, at a Little League game, a vending machine kills the coach by firing canned soda point-blank into his skull. A driverless steamroller flattens one of the fleeing children, but one named Deke Keller (Duncan's son) manages to escape on his bike.

A newly-wed couple, Connie (Yeardley Smith) and Curtis (John Short), stop at a gas station, where a brown tow truck tries to kill Curtis, but he and Connie escape in their car. Deke rides through his town as humans and even pets are brutally killed by lawnmowers, chainsaws, electric hair dryers, pocket radios, and RC cars. At the truck stop, a black Western Star 4800 sporting a giant Green Goblin mask on its grille runs over a Bible salesman after a red garbage truck kills Duncan and dumps some of the junk on the Bible salesman’s car to make him so angry that he insults its “driver”. Later, several big rig trucks encircle the truck stop.

Meanwhile, Connie and Curtis are pursued by a truck, but they make it crash off the side of the road as it exploded. They arrive at the truck stop and try to pass between the trucks, but their car is hit and overturns. Bill and Brett, a hitchhiker, rush to help them, but the trucks attack them. Bill's boss Hendershot uses M72 LAW rockets he had stored in a bunker hidden under the diner to destroy many of the trucks. Deke makes it to the truck stop later that evening and tries to enter via the sewers, but is obstructed by the wire mesh covering the opening. That night, the survivors hear the Bible salesman screaming in a ditch, and Bill and Curtis sneak out to help him by climbing through the sewers. Deke finds the Bible salesman and believes he is dead, but he suddenly jumps up and attacks Deke. Bill and Curtis rescue Deke, and a truck chases them back into the pipe.

The next morning, a Caterpillar D7G bulldozer and an M274 Mule drive through the diner. Hendershot uses the rocket launcher to blow the bulldozer away. The Mule fires its post-mounted M60 machine gun into the building, killing several people. The Mule then demands, via sending morse code signals through its horn that Deke deciphers, that the humans pump the trucks' diesel for them in exchange for their lives. The survivors soon realize they have become enslaved by their own machines. Robinson suggests they escape to a local island just off the coast, on which no motorised vehicles are permitted. While the crew is resting, Robinson theorizes that the comet is actually a "broom" operated by interstellar aliens that are using our machines to destroy humanity so the aliens can repopulate the Earth. During a fueling operation, Robinson sneaks a grenade onto the Mule vehicle, destroying it, then leads the party out of the diner via a sewer hatch to the main road just as the trucks demolish the entire truck stop. The survivors are pursued to the docks by the Green Goblin truck, which manages to kill Brad the trucker. Robinson destroys the truck with a direct hit from an M72 LAW rocket shot. The survivors then sail off to safety. A title card epilogue explains that two days later, a UFO was destroyed by a Soviet "weather satellite" conveniently equipped with class IV nuclear missiles and a laser cannon. Six days later, the Earth passes out of the comet's tail, and the survivors are still alive.

• Emilio Estevez as Bill Robinson
• Pat Hingle as Bubba Hendershot
• Laura Harrington as Brett Graham
• Yeardley Smith as Connie
• John Short as Curtis
• Ellen McElduff as Wanda June
• Frankie Faison as Handy
• Leon Rippy as Brad
• Christopher Murney as Camp Loman
• J. C. Quinn as Duncan Keller
• Holter Graham as Deke Keller
• Barry Bell as Steve Gayton
• Patrick Miller as Joey
• J. Don Ferguson as Andy
• Giancarlo Esposito as Video player
• Stephen King (cameo) as ATM man
• Marla Maples as 2nd woman

The film was the first to be made by Embassy Pictures after it had been bought by Dino de Laurentiis.[2] In a 2002 interview with Tony Magistrale for the book Hollywood's Stephen King, King stated that he was "coked out of [his] mind all through its production, and [he] really didn't know what [he] was doing".[7]

Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote that "by making the machines' malevolence so all-encompassing — so amoral — Mr. King loses the fillip of retribution in better horror films. For the most part, he has taken a promising notion — our dependence on our machines — and turned it into one long car-crunch movie, wheezing from setups to crackups."[9] Variety called it "the kind of film audiences want to talk back to, the kind that throws credibility out the window in favor of crass manipulation. Unfortunately, master manipulator Stephen King, making his directorial debut from his own script, fails to create a convincing enough environment to make the kind of nonsense he's offering here believable or fun."[10] Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "As long as King is tinkering with his crazed machines, the film sustains a certain amount of ominous tension, but as soon as the author turns his attention to his actors, the movie's slender storyline goes limp ... Worse still, the movie never really builds up any momentum or jars us with unexpected jolts of horror."[11] Writing in the Chicago Tribune, Rick Kogan gave the film 1 star out of 4 and called it "a mess of a movie," further stating that "King's direction is heavy handed and his dialogue hackneyed and stiff."[12] Paul Attanasio of The Washington Post wrote that the film "is like sitting alongside a 3-year old as he skids his Tonka trucks across the living room floor and says 'Whee!' except on a somewhat grander scale," and added that as a director Stephen King "proves that he hasn't got an ounce of visual style, the vaguest idea of how to direct actors or the sense that God gave a grapefruit."[13]

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 15% based on reviews from 13 critics.[14] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade D+ on scale of A to F.[15]

In Leonard Maltin's annual publication TV Movie Guide, the film is given a "BOMB" rating.[16] Two Golden Raspberry Award nominations were given out, to Emilio Estevez for Worst Actor and King for Worst Director.[6]

John Clute and Peter Nicholls[17] have offered a modest reappraisal of Maximum Overdrive, admitting the film's many flaws, but arguing that several scenes display enough visual panache to suggest that King was not entirely without talent as a director.

• "Killdozer!" (story)
• List of American films of 1986
• Trucks, another adaptation of King's story

• Maximum Overdrive on IMDb
• Maximum Overdrive at Box Office Mojo
• Maximum Overdrive at Rotten Tomatoes
• Entry on Retro Junk