Generally considered a cinematic atrocity, Maximum Overdrive goes down like a six-pack of beer or a song by AC/DC: trashy, cheap, but it hits the spot in the right situation. When it came out in 1986, the Los Angeles Times called it, “dreary to the max,” the Washington Post said it “hasn’t got an ounce of visual style,” and Variety called it “nonsense.” Whereas It gave book critics a chance to pepper King with weirdly personal insults, Maximum Overdrive, which he wrote and directed, gave film critics their turn. The Post wondered “Has anyone so profitably plundered every inch of his material?” before claiming that the movie revealed King didn’t have “the sense that God gave a grapefruit” and Variety called him a “Master manipulator” which is kind of a compliment if you squint and look at it sideways.
One of King’s few on-the-record comments about the movie is that he was “coked out of my mind all through its production, and really didn’t know what I was doing,” although the crew, in later interviews, universally claimed they never saw him snort a single line. They did, however, see him drink, usually starting on beers around 6AM. But the coke comment, and the fact that, possibly due to King’s lack of experience behind the camera, his Italian cinematographer, Armando Nannuzzi, lost an eye when a stunt went wrong and later sued King and the production for $18 million (it was settled out of court) distract from what we can learn about what Stephen King wants from his horror movies.
After writing the screenplay for Creepshow (1982) King wrote screenplays for The Dead Zone (1983, his draft was rejected both by producer Dino De Laurentiis and director David Cronenberg, who found it “needlessly brutal”) and Children of the Corn (1984, his draft wasn’t used), and he’d reportedly been critical of the way some directors had adapted his stories into film, so it made sense that he would eventually want a turn in the director’s chair so he could turn one of his stories into exactly the kind of horror movie he thought it should be. And judging by Maximum Overdrive you get a feel for what he wants out of a horror movie: something that can play the drive-in.
Scored with wall-to-wall AC/DC and full of plot twists that sacrifice logic for fun (the script doesn’t explain why the owner of the Dixie Boy Truck Stop has a cache of rocket launchers in his basement any better than the film does), this is a movie designed to play to folks who want to pop a beer, sit back in their lawn chair, and turn off their brains. And there’s something to be said for that.
King’s screenplay for Maximum Overdrive (originally titled just Overdrive) is full of dumb fun in its action and dialogue but King’s voice also comes out in the action descriptions. The drawbridge assistant for the opening of the film is described as “about as bright as your average two-pound can of Crisco.” After a vending machine slaughters a team of Little Leaguers King writes, “The can hits in front of [home plate]…and rolls onto it…and stops. First can of Pepsi in history to make a home run.” And when a truck comes at two startled humans, King turns director, writing, “It’s roaring straight into THE CAMERA’S startled eye - - to the people in the first three rows of the theater, it’s going to look like that truck is coming right down their throats.”
He almost cackles to himself when it comes to describing the gore:
“The ATTENDENT looks like Dinty Moore Beef Stew with a lot of ketchup mixed into it. One look and CURT looks ready to blow his Twinkies.”
“The SOUND of bells tinkling a tune is coming from the speakers on top of the truck. My-T Tas-T, the signs on both sides read. The red stuff splattered all over the grille and windshield of the truck is not cherry Kool-Ade. The ice-cream truck has scrubbed maybe twenty people - - we may assume most were unsuspecting kids. I think we may also assume the truck found most of them My-T Tas-T.”
“It runs him down. His body catches in one of the rear wheels and begins to flop around the axle like a bloody rag caught in a washing machine.”
Although there are times when his enthusiasm dwindles and his descriptions trail off in a shrug.
“Another house…a man is sprawled dead on a porch swing, wearing Walkman earphones. Blood below the earpieces; presumably the thing turned itself on and just ‘noised’ him to death.”
Where books are concerned, King has stated over and over that he wants to depict real human experience in an honest way. His goal is to write about realistic humans dealing with some kind of horrific incursion into their lives. But when it comes to movies, he wants to make them loud, proud, and full of gore. Which is strange for a man who has cited his love for Repulsion, The Haunting, Val Lewton’s The Body Snatcher, and Saul Bass’s great experimental ant movie, Phase IV, claiming that “the sound of quality always come through to the keen ear” and that while watching some movies “The ear detects that true ringing sound…and the heart responds.”
He wrote that in his 1981 book-length rumination on horror, Danse Macabre, and goes on to denounce gore-soaked exploitation flicks like The Ghastly Ones as “squalid” and compares them to snuff films. So why didn’t the man who pushes himself hard to deliver the best books he can possibly write not want to strive for that “true ringing sound” his first time in the director’s chair? It might be explained by his passage in Danse where he explains that in horror movies the “field’s most striking successes” are “films which skate right up to the border where ‘art’ ceases to exist in any form and exploitation begins” like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Maybe he wanted to just drive full speed ahead, have some fun, and let the audience decide if he’d made art or not?
Most audiences decided on “not” but only the LA Times gave credit where credit was due, writing in their review, “It’s not a bad effort for a first-time director,” which is true. However, they were in the minority and for whatever reason King was never tempted to go back and direct again. For those of us who love the care and craftsmanship he brings to his books, that was a lucky thing.