Maximum Overdrive (1986)

 

When Earth passes through the tail of Rea-M rogue comet, the machines come to life and start to kill mankind. A group of survivors is under siege from fierce trucks at the Dixie Boy truck stop gas station and they have to fight to survive.

Maximum Overdrive is a 1986 American comedy horror film written and directed by Stephen King. The film stars Emilio Estevez, Pat Hingle, Laura Harrington, and Yeardley Smith (Who voiced Lisa Simpson in the animated hit show "The Simpsons") The screenplay was inspired by and loosely based on King's short story "Trucks", which was included in the author's first collection of short stories, Night Shift, and follows the events after all machines (including cars, trucks, radios, drones, arcades, vending machines, etc.) go sentient when Earth crosses the tail of a comet, initiating a world-wide killing spree. The plot is as simple as an AC/DC drumbeat.

Yes it's fucking stupid, yes its fucking dumb, yes its fucking whatever negative word you might wanna say, but if you want silly action, this is for you. Its not the most complex of plots of course, but if you like watching stuff get blown up or people hit by cars or trucks, or watching little leaguers getting neatly pressed by steamrollers, this delivers.

Where's Spider Man

There's a lot of fun and splatter going on at the Truck Stop, but still the most entertaining sequences in "Maximum Overdrive" take place elsewhere. The scene at the beginning, for instance, where a massive bridge decides for itself to lift open while plenty of traffic is crossing, or the brutal footage at the baseball training field where the vending machine starts firing off soda cans at the coach and kids.  It probably just thought they were thirsty after a hard day of practice. 

It is as bad as it's reputation would have you believe but at the same time it enters the "so bad it's good" range because of how silly it all is.  In recent years, King has admitted that he didn't know what he was doing and that he was snorting cocaine at the time.  Cocaine's a Hell of a drug. 

Dude took a coke can to the head. I'm switching to Pepsi.

The movie begins with a cameo from King and his wife, as an ATM machine calls him an asshole. That ATM machine must have had to sit through this film.  The comet that passes our planet makes machines go crazy and kill humans. Literally, that's all you need to know. There's no need to worry about subtext or character development. Just watch machines kill people and people kill machines and enjoy 96 minutes of your life without the need to make decisions.

Run!!! We have to get off of this film set. 

There's something for everyone in this film, like waitresses flipping out and screaming at bulldozers before being shot ("We made you! We made you!"), plenty of AC/DC, including the song Who Made Who that was written for the film. There's an ice cream truck that tries to kill the survivors. The machines demand gasoline via Morse code and a kid shooting a drive-in menu board to get revenge for his dad. Crazy shit going on. 

This film has cokehead 80's acting at its finest. Its even edited like a cokehead edited it. You may think this is a detractor... but it actually encapsulates a section of Hollywood that somehow got things done in an era where tinseltown skidmarked on a lot of things in a post Star Wars hot MTV time.  So grab some beers and prepare for mindless entertainment.

Trivia:

When asked why he hasn't directed a movie since "Maximum Overdrive", Stephen King responded "Just watch Maximum Overdrive."

Stephen King, being a former cocaine addict, later admitted that he was "coked out of my mind" the entire time he was making this picture and often didn't know what he was doing. He remarked that he'd like to try directing again someday, this time sober.

About a year after the movie was released, the Green Goblin truck was taken to Silent Rick's Towing and Salvage in Wilmington, NC. The jaw, lower teeth, tongue and tops of the ears were gone and what was left was burnt severely. John Allison of Wilmington, NC saw it there and purchased it. He later had to sell it and Tim Shockey of Piketon, Ohio purchased it on February 19, 1987. Tim displayed it in his video store, Uncle Jim's Videoland, in Waverly, Ohio for several years until he sold the business. He moved it to his back yard for about 20 years. It was then moved into his garage and he started restoring it in 2011. Tim spent 2 years, nights and weekends restoring the head. He now travels across the USA and Canada taking it to horror & comic cons.

Evil's wheels.

While shooting the scene where the steamroller rampages across the baseball diamond, Stephen King requested that the SFX department place a bag of fake blood near the dummy of a young player who would be run over by it. The desired effect would be that a smear of blood would appear on the steamroller and be re-smeared on the grass over and over, like a printing press. While filming the scene, however, the bag of blood exploded too soon and sprayed everywhere, making it appear as if the boy's head had also exploded. King was thrilled with the results, but censors demanded the shot be cut.

The "Dixie Boy" truck stop was a set constructed 10 miles outside of Wilmington, North Carolina. It was convincing enough that several truckers tried to stop in, and eventually the producers had to put announcements in local papers saying that the "Dixie Boy" was just a movie set.

AC/DC was selected to make the music for the movie by Stephen King himself.

An accident occurred on July 31, 1985 during shooting in a suburb of Wilmington, North Carolina where a radio-controlled lawnmower used in a scene went out of control and struck a block of wood used as a camera support, shooting out wood splinters which injured the director of photography Armando Nannuzzi; as a result, he lost his right eye. Nannuzzi sued Stephen King on February 18, 1987 for $18 million in damages. The suit was settled out of court.

It's been long rumored that George A. Romero actually ghost directed a large portion of the film while King was seeking treatment for his cocaine addiction. Many fans of Romero's work have noted that film features many of his distinct camera angles and editing choices. While King has never admitted this upfront, he has mentioned that Romero was constantly on set and King would frequently ask him for advice about directing.

The original scripted ending had the Dixie Boy survivors deal with one last obstacle before escaping, a machine gun mounted coast guard boat. There was also to be one last shot of the city of Wilmington being destroyed by the machines (rumored to have been done via a matte painting).

The head on the main truck is based on that of Marvel Comics' Green Goblin.

Some trucks used in the movie were from local businesses and the actual names of the businesses remained on the trucks in the movie.

While filming the scene where the ice cream truck flips over, the stunt didn't go according to plan. A telephone-pole size beam of wood was placed inside so it would flip end over end, but the truck only flipped once and slid on its roof right into the camera. Gene Poole, dolly grip on the film, pulled the cameraman out of the way at the last second. Subsequently, Poole's name is listed on one of the time cards when Bill is putting his card back after being told by Bubba that he must work more hours than he is going to get paid for.

Stephen King originally wanted to cast Bruce Springsteen in the lead.

Shit happens

Stephen King is a huge fan of AC/DC, and when he got to meet them he asked them if they would provide music for this movie. He also offered the band a role in the film, but AC/DC declined stating they are not actors. Claims that there is a scene with the band on a boat are untrue. However, the band agreed to do the soundtrack after Stephen King sung "Ain't No Fun (Waiting Round to Be a Millionaire)" from their 1976 album Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. King sang the entire song from start to finish and the band laughingly agreed that if he was such a fan they would do it for him. AC/DC perform all but two songs featured in the film, including two unreleased mixes of previously recorded songs, and the entire 1987 album "Who Made Who" is the soundtrack to this movie. AC/DC wrote a new track called Who Made Who, and various instrumentals, only two of which appear on the album. The rest of the songs are from previous AC/DC albums. At the time of the release many music stores had no idea the album Who Made Who was a compilation soundtrack for this movie, and many mislabeled the album as an AC/DC greatest hits. Limited pressings of the album did feature the movie's logo, stating it was the soundtrack to Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive, but this was later removed from future pressings.

It is because of this movie that Evil Dead became a franchise. Stephen King loved The Evil Dead (1981) and his high praise of the film is largely credited with its success. While making this film he heard Sam Raimi and the other creators were having difficulty making a sequel. King brought this to the attention of producer Dino De Laurentiis who helped Raimi make Evil Dead II (1987). Had King not been working with De Laurentiis on this movie at the time the horror franchise may never have gotten past the original.

Several of the radio-controlled trucks used for the Dixie Boy siege broke down throughout filming, which delayed production as every time a truck would break down and get repaired, another truck would also break down.

Coked up and ready to direct

In Maximum Overdrive, the characters talk about going to an island named Haven where there are no cars. The TV show Haven (2010), also based on King's work, premiered in 2010. In the season 2 episode Haven: Love Machine (2011), cars and boats are seen coming to life and attacking humans much as they did in this film.

Yeardley Smith is greatly embarrassed by this film

Stephen King later called this "a moron movie"

Despite the plot which says that all machines in the world come alive and begin killing people, Camp and the Curtis' cars never becomes sentient. Even Hendershot's car, identifiable by the license plate BUBBA stamped on it, never comes alive itself and (along with nearly all of the other cars in the truck stop parking lot and in other scenes) remains sedate throughout the entire movie.

In the film, the Earth passes through the comet's tail on June 19, 1987. On June 19, 1999, King would be hit, and nearly killed by a distracted truck driver. The number 19 has been prominent in his writing for most of his career.

The song being played by the marauding ice cream truck is 'King of the Road,' by Roger Miller.

In the film the character Brett says to the Bible salesman "eat my shorts" under her breath. Yeardley Smith voices the character of Lisa Simpson on The Simpsons (1989), whose brother Bart says that same tag line. The line is also used in The Breakfast Club, another movie starring Emilio Estevez.

In the game room of the Dixie Boy truck stop, they had a Bally Night Rider pinball game, a Williams Pokerino, and a few video games: a Cinematronics Star Castle, a Atari Tempest Cocktail and a Konami Time Pilot '84 in a Stern cabinet. Fairly early on in the movie, the Night Rider playfield glass smashes itself, and very late in the movie, for a split second, you can see the games being plowed into by a semi truck.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1995)

 

A group of teenagers get into a car crash in the Texas woods on prom night, and then wander into an old farmhouse that is home to Leatherface and his insane family of cannibalistic psychopaths.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation is a 1995 American slasher film written and directed by Kim Henkel, and starring Renée Zellweger, Matthew McConaughey, and Robert Jacks as Leatherface.

Not sure what to make of this film. You have a young McConaughey and a young Zellwegar in a film that could have derailed their careers. Fortunately for them it didn't come out until after they became stars. MCconaughey is a deranged, bug-eyed hillbilly with a remote-controlled leg, and Renee Zellweger as a "teen" victim, running, screaming, and jumping through windows!

The film is your basic teenagers on the way home from the prom get lost and stuck and run into spooky family in the middle of nowhere - mayhem ensues. One of the biggest gripes that people have with this film (which is saying a lot, because there is nothing but stuff to gripe about) is that Leatherface seems to have become a transvestite.

If looks could kill he woudn't need a chainsaw

Why the focus on Leatherface being a transvestite? Leatherface is a side character anyway, it is Vilmer (McConaughey) who is the star. If you don't believe me that he's more the star than Leatherface, count how many people Leatherface, or anyone else, kills with a chainsaw in the movie (hint: none). Vilmer is the new head of household in the backwoods family, working as a tow-truck driver/reckless murderer and who has the fascinating addition of an electric leg that is operated by remote control. And have I mentioned his fucking robot leg? 

There are two deaths in the film, both of side characters. One is run over with a truck. The other has his neck broken. In a movie titled "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation," one would expect gory murders a plenty--though that is far from reality in this case. There is no blood, no guts, and no chainsaw killings. The Leatherface character does absolutely nothing in the film. Excuse me. He does do something. He dresses up like a woman and shrieks his chainsaw above his head while screaming wildly.

Bridget Jones has fucked up here

And what's with the ending? The man and the woman in the trailer have a different person dubbing their voices for them? Why? And what about the airplane flying around and then suddenly hitting a character in the head and oil comes out of their brain? What? There's also some rubbish about the Illuminati, but I won't even bother going into that.

The whole thing works better as a kind of demented screwball comedy, rather than a true horror film. If you have enough beers, this MIGHT be good for a few laughs, but it would take quite a few beers.

Just a normal family dinner

Trivia:

When asked about this movie, Renée Zellweger said, "It was dangerous. I don't know if any of it was legal. It was a great workout. Running from a guy with a live chainsaw is excellent motivation. It was a lot of fun. It was my first role, really. I couldn't believe that somebody was going to trust me with that, that somebody was going to take this chance (on me). I was really grateful. I have no shame about that (movie)."

Despite the title, absolutely zero people are massacred via a chainsaw.

Renée Zellweger reflected on this movie in a 2016 interview, and said: "It was very low budget, so we all shared a tiny Winnebago that the producer of the film--it belonged to him, it was his personal camper. So, you know, make-up was in the front seats and there was a table in the middle for hair, and there was a tiny little curtain by the bathroom. That was where you put your prom dress and your flower on. It was ridiculous. How we pulled that off, I have no idea. I'm sure none of it was legal. Anything we did was a little bit dangerous But what an experience. It was kamikaze filmmaking."

Don't you dare use my name in the promotion of this movie

Matthew McConaughey had just graduated college and planned on moving to California when he auditioned for this movie. He read for the part of a young motorcyclist who rescues Jenny at the end and rides off with her into the sunset (a role that was eventually eliminated). Before he left, writer / producer / director Kim Henkel asked if he knew of anyone who might be right for the role of the villain, Vilmer. McConaughey suggested two friends from acting class and left. He was about to get in his truck and drive to California when he stopped and realized, "What was I thinking?" He immediately turned around and asked Henkel, "Hey, can I audition for Vilmer?" Henkel gave him a spoon from the kitchen, told him to pretend it's a knife and tasked him with scaring his secretary. Then, in the middle of the audition, he told him to pretend his mechanical leg was malfunctioning. McConaughey was so convincing that he won the role of Vilmer on the spot.

Matthew McConaughey (Vilmer) and Renée Zellweger (Jenny) came to fame two years later, with A Time to Kill (1996) and Jerry Maguire (1996), respectively. Both shared the same talent agency. When Sony, which owned this movie's distribution rights, was preparing to re-release it, , highlighting the pair, their agent threatened a lawsuit against the studio, claiming their clients were being unfairly exploited. The agency also said that if Sony released this movie on the backs of their names, neither would appear in any future Sony releases. The film was eventually given a brief, limited theatrical release in September 1997.

The hospital scene at the end featured two actors and one actress from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). John Dugan, who played Grandfather in "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre", is the cop. Paul A. Partain, who played Franklin Hardesty in "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre", is the orderly. Marilyn Burns, who played Sally Hardesty in "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre", is the patient on the gurney (credited as "Anonymous").

Matthew McConaughey says his Dazed and Confused (1993) catchphrase, "All right, all right, all right" in this movie.

Intended by writer /producer / director Kim Henkel to be the "real" sequel to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). The characters of Vilmer and W.E. were intended to be the Hitchhiker and Cook characters from "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre". Jim Siedow was approached to reprise his role as Cook, but was unable to.

This was filmed on-location at an abandoned farmhouse in Pflugerville, Texas and nearby Bastrop. The majority of the cast and crew were locals from Austin, aside from David Gale, a stage actor from Houston. Most of the filming took place at night, and was described by Make-up Artist J.M. Logan as "very, very rough for everyone."

My brother here is tired of what's-her-name's face, and he wants a new one. It just so happens to be, he wants this face right here!

This movie is recursive in that it opens with an intertitle referring to two "minor, yet apparently related incidents," a joking acknowledgment of the previous two sequels. Justin Yandell of "Bloody Disgusting" interprets this movie as a cynical re-imagining of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), with Henkel parodying his own work. He cites Leatherface's ineffectiveness at dispatching his victims, as well as the archetypal teenage characters as evidence of this movie being a commentary on the declining state of horror movies in the late 1980s and early 1990s: Leatherface, once efficient, methodical, and nearly silent, now struggles to competently capture or kill his victims, all the while screaming like a petulant child. The family, no longer backwater cannibals, dines on pizza instead of the fresh meat of their victims. The dinner sequence, originally one of the most effective and horrifying scenes ever committed to film, goes so far off the rails, it climaxes with Jenny turning the tables on her captors and scolding Leatherface into sitting down and shutting up. The ineffectiveness of it all of this is intentional, and we know this because a man in a limo pulls up and openly acknowledges it.

When W.E. comes in with the sawed door, he bickers at Vilmer and Darla, saying, "Look what your brother did to this door." This line is very similar to what Drayton says to the Hitchhiker in [ The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974),] when they came home with Sally. Drayton, upon seeing the sawed door, shouts "Look what your brother did to the door!"

Bill Johnson, who played Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986), was offered the role of Leatherface.

Writer, Producer, and Director Kim Henkel said the characters were purposefully written as cartoonish caricatures of American teenagers in the time this movie was made.

I'm just a sweet transvestite, from Transsexual, Transylvania.

[ at about 1 hr, 4 min. ] Darla (Tonie Perensky) is wearing a sleeveless dress. When Vilmer throws Darla on the top of a table that has mechanical stuff and junk on it, and gets on top of her, in real life she got slightly injured. Tonie got a cut below her left elbow, and there is a patch of blood a few inches long. But Tonie finished filming the scene anyway. Tonie is a real trooper.

Has been noted for its implementation of a secret society subplot driving Leatherface's family to terrorize people in order to provoke them to a level of transcendence. In a retrospective interview, writer / producer / director Kim Henkel confirmed that the basis of the subplot was influenced by theories surrounding the Illuminati. Commenting on this movie's ominous Rothman character, Henkel stated, "He comes off more like the leader of some harum-scarum cult that makes a practice of bringing victims to experience horror on the pretext that it produces some sort of transcendent experience. Of course, it does produce a transcendent experience. Death is like that. But no good comes of it. You're tortured and tormented, and get the crap scared out of you, and then you die." Other references to the Illuminati are made in this movie's dialogue, specifically in the scene in which Darla tells Jenny about the thousands-years-old secret society in control of the U.S. government, and makes reference to the President John F. Kennedy assassination. Critic Russell Smith noted in discussion of this plot point: "Could the unexplained 'them' be an allusion to the insatiable horror audience that always makes these gorefests a good investment, or is it a cabal of governmental powermongers?"

In a 1996-released documentary on the making of this movie, Kim Henkel stated that he wrote the characters as exaggerated "cartoonish" caricatures of quintessential American youth. Henkel cited the murder cases of serial killers Ed Gein and Elmer Wayne Henley as influences on his involvement on this movie and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Henkel also deliberately wrote themes of female empowerment into the script, specifically in the Jenny character: "It's her story. It's about her transformation, her refusal to shut up, to be silenced, to be victimized. And by extension her refusal to be oppressed. Even by culture. Bringing Jenny into a world in which the culture was grotesquely exaggerated was a way of bringing her to see her own world more clearly that is to say, my intent was to present a nightmarish version of Jenny's world in the form of the Chainsaw family in order to enlarge her view of her own world."

Well, first, I'm gonna kill you. It ain't no fuckin biggie.

Another element noted by critics and movie scholars is this movie's overt references to cross-dressing in the Leatherface character, which was briefly explored in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), but implemented to a greater extent. Robert Wilonsky of the Houston Press commented on this movie's treatment of the character, writing that this movie "turns Leatherface (Robert Jacks) into a cross-dressing nancy boy who screams more than he saws." According to Robert Jacks, he wrote the character as one who assumes the persona of the person whose face he wears: "The confused sexuality of the Leatherface character is complex and horrifying at the same time", he said in a 1996 interview. Movie scholar Scott Von Doviak also took note of this, likening Leatherface's presentation in this movie to that of a "tortured drag Queen."

In developing this movie, Executive Producer Robert Kuhn stated: "I wanted to go back to the original, and he (Kim Henkel) did, too. We agreed on that right off. And the first major thing was getting him to write the script. I raised the money to get it written, and for us to start trying to put this thing together. Then we went out to the American Film Market in Los Angeles and talked to a bunch of people about financing. At that point, I'd raised some money, but not nearly enough to make the film, and we looked at the possibilities of making a deal with a distributor. But I knew there wasn't any hope of us making one we could live with. There never is. Kim would say, 'Hey, so-and-so is interested, and it might be a deal we can live with.' So we'd talk to 'em and I'd ask three or four hard questions, and I'd just kind of look over at Kim and he'd say 'Yeah.' Then I'd go back and start trying to raise some more money. I just started going to everybody I knew and I got it in bits and pieces, wherever I could."

The chainsaw is a McCulloch PRO MAC 700. A 70.5cc saw.

Matthew McConaughey originally auditioned for a hero role that was later cut, then recommended a couple of friends for the role before auditioning himself.

Near the end of Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990), Ken Foree asks Viggo Mortensen why they are doing this. Viggo says because they are hungry. Ken asks Viggo if he ever heard of pizza. In this movie, Tonie Perensky is shown bringing pizza home for the family.