Director: Stephen King
Starring: Emilio Estevez, Pat Hingle, Yeardley Smith, Laura Harrington, John Short
31 Days of Horror continues with this review by Robert Nijman. Send me your horror reviews.
‘It isn’t the comet. It’s a broom. Imagine you’re a race of aliens, right? And, you’re looking for a new place to live. Say you’re looking for a planet like you and I are looking for a new place to live. A new house. So here’s Earth. Only it’s like this big old house. And, it’s kind of polluted, dirty, and smoky. Grease on the walls, soot in the chimney. So, they send in their interstellar housecleaners. Send in their broom. Sweep us all up. That’s what this it is, it’s a broom. Using our own machines to sweep us right off’
If you want a Stephen King story done right, you have to do it yourself. So says Stephen King about his first ever gig as a movie director, as he didn’t trust anyone else with the source material – or so he would have you believe in the trailers for Maximum Overdrive, which he based on one of his own short stories. Now, almost twenty-five years after he did turn Trucks into a major motion picture, his credits on IMDb still list the resulting movie as his only sidestep into directing – a possible reflection on the outcome, both financially as well as creatively. Especially since he went on record stating that he (supposedly) was “coked out of his mind” for the entire duration of the project. Which, admittedly, does explain quite a lot. With respect to both the quality of the movie, as well as the fun that can be had with it. Because you just don’t see a lot of homicidal ice cream vans on the rampage to the tune of ‘King of the Road’ in movies these days. Which is a shame.
In 1986 on the other hand, it was all the rage. It was also a period in our planet’s cycle where Emilio Estevez had yet to go on his first Stakeout (let alone Another one), Yeardley Smith wasn’t almost exclusively known for voicing Lisa Simpson, and earth was passing through the tail of a mysterious comet called Rhea-M. And, even though the UN had dubbed it the International Year of Peace, that meant each and every piece of machinery – be it small appliances such as electric bread knives or lawnmowers, or big ones such as cars, trucks and even tow bridges – developed violent minds of their own. Evil, violent minds, which made them turn on their creators and wreak absolute havoc on civilization as the eighties knew it.
The first fifteen minutes or so focus on the collective carnage and global destruction that ensue when machines take over – with a vengeance. Think Skynet, if it got its virtual hands on Transformers’ AllSpark. Bizarre incidents the world over (or, you know, probably the world over – we only get the American side of it) quickly increment alarming chaos, body count, and bad taste. Soda machines start canning their customers, steamrollers flatten poor, defenceless Little Leaguers and AC/DC has its way with the viewers’ central nervous system. There’s even an ATM machine that employs, let’s say, colourful language when King walks by for his obligatory cameo, as if the little electronic banker knew all about the director’s apparent substance abuse, and felt strongly like judging it.
The movie quickly settles down to a smaller scale though, and shifts focus to the Dixie Boy Truck Stop outside of Wilmington, North Carolina – a movie set so convincing the producers had to take out ads in local papers to inform potential customers it was indeed as fake as most of the picture’s special effects. It’s here where King’s short story starts to make sense titularly, as trucks have taken over control of all gas-related activities. Led by an enormous toy company truck sporting a diabolical goblin face (in part based on Marvel’s Green Goblin) on his hood, the rabid (and spectacularly stealthy) 18-wheelers trap everyone inside their gas guzzling circle of death, employing the few surviving humans as petrol pump attendants. Who other than Emilio Estevez and his newly found love interest then, to rise to the challenge, emerging as the proverbial John and Sarah Connor to lead the human resistance against the maniacal machinery. Cue endless tomfoolery, involving stubborn bible salesmen, sentient machine-gun-mounted carts, bazookas that appear to come out of nowhere, and the voice of Lisa Simpson.
As the last bunch of adequate-at-best actors and Pat Hingle take their stand and struggle for survival – all the while providing their common enemies with the one substance that keeps them going – it has long since become apparent the director’s nickname should be changed to King of Written Horror, as he repeatedly falls short of making the proper choices when it comes to such trivial directing tasks as controlling the artistic and dramatic aspects, and guiding the technical crew towards scenes that don’t appear to be improvised on the spot when costly special effects are employed in order to impress the audience, as opposed to poking their funny bones in a horror movie that doesn’t try to be a comedy, but very much ends up being. Which is in no way depressing, as the very fact the movie is indeed funny, intentionally or otherwise, is in the end what makes it work. In much the same way Critters is awesome in spite of being awful, The Running Man is a blast, and you are never able (or willing) to flip the channel when Mars Attacks comes along. Also, it did make it into a Simpsons episode (Maximum Homerdrive), which has to account for something – these spoofs tend to be reserved for merely the legendary. So it has that going for it. Which is nice.
On an interesting, concluding and possibly Halloween-related note: during shooting, one of the radio-controlled lawnmowers actually did run amuck, striking a camera support that ultimately led to the loss of one of DOP Armando Nannuzzi’s eyes – for which he sued King for eighteen million dollars. Also, one of the stunts involving the ice cream van from hell went awry and one of the cameramen was pulled out of the way at the last second, just before he was turned into Rocky Roadkill. Or at the very least buried head to toe in French Vanilla. Brrr.
‘Honey! C’mon over here, Sugar-buns. This machine just called me an asshole!’
