35 Years Later: ‘Maximum Overdrive’ is Still a Hell of a Ride

July 26, 2021

Like many 30-something adults, Stephen King made his way into my childhood early. I remember my dad was a member of the Stephen King Book Club, and every few months a new hardback King book would show up in a cardboard book prison that basically took Hulk-like strength to open. I was 11 years old, and had seen my dad burn through King books every couple of weeks. Of course, I wanted to be cool like him, so I grabbed our copy of IT, to which he quickly snatched from my fingers and said, “I don’t think so,” before replacing it with a book he thought was a little more suitable for a pre-teen, Misery. Thus began my love for Stephen King, and predicated the excitement in my early twenties, when I learned he directed a horror film in the 1986, a film that turned 35 this year, same as me. That film was Maximum Overdrive.

Maximum Overdrive was loosely based on the short story “Trucks” from King’s book, Night Shift. In the film, a comet flies by Earth, catching the planet in its tail, and causes inanimate machines to come to life in hopes to enslave or kill the human race. Soda machines shoot out cans with deadly accuracy, lawnmowers and chainsaws murder their owners, and even King himself is called an asshole by his local ATM. The story of the film focuses on a small group of workers at the Dixie Boy Truck Stop, led by Emilio Estevez (The Breakfast Club, The Mighty Ducks), Pat Hingle (Batman, Batman Returns), Laura Harrington (What’s Eating Gilbert Grape), and Yeardley Smith (Lisa in The Simpsons) and their wild ride of survival against a fleet of murderous self-aware trucks.

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One fortunate connection I have with Maximum Overdrive is that I live near Wilmington, NC, where the film was shot and takes place. The bridge that unexpectedly (and purposely) opens to plunge a bunch of North Carolinians to their deaths is the same bridge I cross on my 8-minute commute to work every morning. The Myers House NC is a small company run by horror fanatic Kenny Caperton, known for living in and giving tours of an exact replica house from Halloween. Caperton also runs On Set Cinema, another program that travels across the country to different horror filming locations for screenings, Q&As, and other fun film related activities. This year, I had the amazing opportunity to drive five minutes down to the road from my house and watch Maximum Overdrive at the location of the Dixie Boy Truck Stop to celebrate the film’s 35th birthday.

What a blast this was, watching this film with my wife and two friends, all who were experiencing this insanity for the first time, while smashing some pizza and rocking out to AC/DC for a couple of hours, all while the speeding cars on Highway 74 added to the film’s atmosphere. AC/DC, by the way, does the entire Maximum Overdrive soundtrack, and released the album Who Made Who as both a studio album and film soundtrack.

Before the screening, a couple of the Dixie Boys from the film, actors Patrick Miller and Barry Bell, joined the crowd for an amazing Q&A, revealing some of the crazy on-set secrets that came with the movie’s filming, including their personal experiences with Stephen King the director, rather than Stephen King the novelist. We sat roughly where the Dixie Boy Truck Stop once stood (before being blown to hell in the film), and the movie was projected onto the neighboring storage buildings, also seen in the film. You couldn’t ask for a better summer night.

Maximum Overdrive is the only film Stephen King ever directed, and of course doesn’t hold a candle in quality to some other films based on his work, like The Green Mile or Stand by Me, however, this film is a lot of fun. It’s the perfect ’80s cheese fest to laugh, drink, and be merry to with a group of your friends. Even 35 years after its release (and 24 years after my introduction to Stephen King), Maximum Overdrive is still one hell of a ride.