The Corner Penthouse

Maximum Overdrive arrives on Blu-ray as the 17th entry in Lionsgate's Vestron Video Collector's Series, "a line of classic genre films newly remastered and with a wealth of supplementary features." I have reviewed several other titles in the series.


Maximum Overdrive (1986) is the tale of what happens when the Earth passes through the tail of a mysterious comet. For three days, the skies glow an eerie green as the comet's magnetic fields cause all the machines on Earth to suddenly come to life and terrorize their human creators in a horrific killing spree. Now, it's up to a small group of people trapped in a desolate truck stop to defeat the killer machines - or be killed by them!


Written and directed by Stephen King (his only directorial effort), based on his short story "Trucks" from the Night Shift collection, the film stars Emilio Estevez, Laura Harrington, Pat Hingle (Commissioner Gordon from the Tim Burton "Batman" films), Yeardley Smith (voice of Lisa Simpson), and others. King himself makes his usual cameo appearance as the man that the bank ATM calls an "asshole". Although King promises in the movie's trailer that the film will scare you, nothing could be further from the truth. Well, I guess if you watch this as a little kid, it will frighten you, but as an adult, it's more comedy than horror. Heck, I couldn't stop laughing at the way people were falling all over each other in the opening bridge scene. Maximum Overdrive is a film best seen as "so bad, it's good".


Although there is no official "Stephen King Cinematic Universe", some of the movies and TV shows based on his works will reference something that is common to the King universe. In Maximum Overdrive, the group's plan is to make it to Haven, an island up in Maine where motor vehicles are not allowed. Twenty-six years later, the Syfy channel would air a show named Haven (2010–2015), which was loosely based on Stephen King's "The Colorado Kid". The season 2 episode, "Love Machine", was about cars and boats coming to life and attacking humans.


It's a little known fact that 20 years later, there would be an unofficial sequel to Maximum Overdrive, produced by a different movie studio. In 2006, Disney/Pixar released the animated motion picture Cars, which shows what happens after the cars have eliminated all of the humans and have rose up to become the dominate "species" on the planet - a story element borrowed from the Planet of the Apes series. Turning King's work into family-friendly fare proved to be a great success for Disney. Cars spawned two sequels, though neither revealed the horrific backstory of how the cars came to be sentient beings.


At a runtime of 1:38:28, Maximum Overdrive is presented in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio. On the audio side, there's English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, and Original English 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio tracks. (The 5.1 track is not mentioned on the case.) The film includes English, English SDH, and Spanish subtitles. The first print run includes a shiny slipsleeve featuring the beautiful new cover art by Justin Osbourn of Slasher Design. For some reason, Lionsgate failed to mention the artist's name in the press release or on the packaging, or even to make a big deal of the fact that the release features newly commissioned artwork.


Some new special features were created for this release.

• Audio Commentary with writer Tony Magistrale, author of Hollywood's Stephen King
• Audio Commentary by actor and comedian Jonah Ray and Blumhouse film executive Ryan Turek
• Truck Stop Tales (15:39) - An interview with producer Martha De Laurentiis.
• Rage Against the Machines (9:57) - An interview with actress Laura Harrington.
• Honeymoon Horrors (18:18) - Interviews with actor John Short and actress Yeardley Smith.
• A Kid in King's Court (17:10) - An interview with actor Holter Graham.
• Maximum Carnage (16:33) - An interview with make-up effects creator Dean Gates.
• The Wilmington Factor (29:32) - A look back at the filming of Maximum Overdrive with members of the production crew in North Carolina.
• Who Made Who? (6:32) - An interview with Murray Engleheart, co-author of AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll.
• Goblin Resurrectus (9:49) - The restoration of the Happy Toyz goblin face featuring Tim Shockey of The Goblin Project.
• Behind the Scenes Footage (8:44) - Home video B-roll footage showing the filming of various scene.
• Still Gallery (5:49) - Various photos, movie posters, and vintage video cover art.
• Theatrical Trailer (2:06) - Stephen King talks to the viewer about the movie.
• TV Spots (1:06) - Two spots, the second one is a cut-down of the trailer.

As is the case with the Vestron series, all of the special features are a mix of new interviews and vintage footage. The only complaint I have here is with "The Wilmington Factor", which I expected to be more like the "Horror's Hollowed Grounds" featurettes found on other studio's releases. I thought it would give us a tour of the Wilmington filming locations and show us what they look like now. There's a brief 10-20 second montage of that near the end, but it's otherwise a collection of interviews with people from the area who worked on the film.


"The Wilmington Factor" shows you quick now-and-then shots of the bridge, the newlywed's truck stop, the soda machine attack, and the Dixie Boy truck stop. It doesn't show you the house that Deke hides in front of (so the ice cream truck doesn't see him), before the lawnmower tries to attack him. You can find that house at 2325 Shirley Road in Wilmington, North Carolina. Above is what the house looks like in the movie, and below is what it looks like in July 2012 (as per Google Maps). The scene is surrounded by shots of the ice cream truck turning off Kenwood Avenue onto Shirley, and then from Shirley onto Thomas Avenue. Both of these are accurate in regards to the placement of the house.


Maximum Overdrive also features an unintended Ghostbusters reference. The Dixie Boy truck stop features an arcade room in the back. Giancarlo Esposito (later the magic mirror on Once Upon A Time and Gus on Breaking Bad & Better Call Saul) is the hapless "Videoplayer" who is seduced by flashing ESP symbols on the "Star Castle" game screen. Upon touching the machine, he gets electrocuted and adds to the body count. "Star Castle" was one of the arcade cabinets seen in the living quarters of Ghostbusters' headquarters. The ESP symbols that the machines uses to hypnotize Giancarlo are the same ones Peter used in his "experiment" with the college students. By the transitive properties of ESP + Star Castle = Ghostbusters, and ESP + Star Castle = Maximum Overdrive, we get a Ghostbusters reference in Maximum Overdrive.


While Maximum Overdrive is far from perfect, I found it thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish. If helps if you view it as a horror-comedy, and not a straight horror film. RECOMMENDED, as long as you go into it with that mind set. Anyone expecting to be scared will be very disappointed. The story was later retold as the 1997 TV movie Trucks, starring Timothy Busfield.




As of right now (updated 10/23/2018), the Vestron Video Collector's Series includes the following Blu-ray releases, all of which contain new bonus materials just like the one I reviewed.






Images used come from the still image gallery on the disc and the Internet Movie Database gallery of the film. ESP symbols animated gif has been made by me, Paul Rudoff. The Blu-ray has been provided by Lionsgate for review on this site.