Maximum Overdrive transcript
Season 1 · Episode 8. Generated automatically, so expect the odd misheard word.
Hello and welcome to the worst movie podcast. I'm Ade
I'm Aaron and this is a podcast where we watch the worst movies ever made in the hopes of finding a hidden gem.
Enjoy.
Okay, today we're going to cover quite the movie, Maximum Overdrive, a Stephen King movie that came out in 1986. And it's all part of our October theme of horrible horror. Stephen King's first and only directing effort starring Emilio Estevez, Laura Harrington, Pat Hingle, streaming on Roku Tubi
You want to give us a quick synopsis of the movie?
Sure. When a mysterious comet passes Earth, machines come to life and turn homicidal, forcing a group of survivors at a truck stop to fight back against the killer vehicles.
This movie has 14 % on Rotten Tomatoes, 2.6 average rating on Letterbox. It failed at the box office, made $7 million on a $9 million budget. We'll also post the trailer in the show notes. The trailer is quite a trip. Did you happen to watch the trailer?
I did, I liked the trailer.
Yeah, it has Stephen King himself, with quite the performance in the trailer, talking to the screen about how he's going to scare the hell out of you, in this movie. He was a huge part of the marketing effort, apparently of this movie. I mean, it was a big deal to have him direct his first movie. He was, you know, already wildly famous and, ⁓ yeah, huge, huge bomb, huge disappointment given.
the high expectations around Stephen King. What? Yeah, yeah, he has a cameo at the ATM and the in the first. Yeah, the first shot. mean, first person we see in the movie, basically. So. Yeah, what's your relationship with Stephen King? Are you a big fan or what do you think about him?
He's briefly in the movie, isn't he? At the beginning?
This is Hitchcock cameo.
I'll preface this by saying that I'm generally a fan of Stephen King and his work. I might be a little bit too young to have followed his career at his peak in the eighties. and because of that, I think there's some big hitters in his catalog that I haven't seen. I haven't seen Carrie. I haven't seen Pet Sematary. I haven't seen Children of the Corn. I saw Misery once like 20 years ago.
Yeah, but probably too young to appreciate it.
⁓ and
Yeah, and I think we've already established that I'm not that into the horror genre, so I'm probably not his target demo. And I also think that there's kind of some nuance to this question. There's Stephen King books and then there's Stephen King adapted movies. ⁓ And then there's the one movie he directed and then kind of the TV shows and movies he's produced on. ⁓
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
I think the only book of his that I've actually read is 112263 that I really enjoyed and I saw the mini series on that too and I liked it with with James Franco. But I'm not that familiar with stuff he's worked on. I'm much more familiar with the adapted movies like Shawshank, It, The Shining, Stand By Me.
Two of those I think are some of the best movies ever made. ⁓ So I would say that generally I'm a fan, but I'm maybe not like a fanboy.
yeah.
Right. I would say the same thing for myself. Like I'm, I'm not a, an aficionado. I've read maybe two of his novels. of the ones you mentioned. I don't think I've seen Pet Sematary, or, Children of the Corn. So, but I can't remember. I, I.
I agree. he has such a breadth of work that it's hard to. You know, hate Stephen King because clearly there's some amazing movies that have been adapted from his works.
But yeah, it's hard to talk about this movie without talking about him. There's a lot of background in this movie getting made I should start by saying I only tangentially knew about this movie. Has you heard much about this movie or what did you know about this movie?
Nothing. I didn't know about this until we started kind of looking for bad movies to do.
Yeah, so the there's a iconic image I would say from this movie of a semi truck with the green goblin mask on the front of it. I had recognized that image and I think I had I feel like I've seen something that that's parody did or referenced it and how I knew about the movie, but I didn't really know much about the movie itself.
Yeah, that truck did seem familiar to me, but I wouldn't have been able to place it from this movie. But it does seem like I've seen that somewhere before. It might be a meme or something.
Yeah.
Right. But the background reading about the production of this movie, it's kind of wild. it's, I like that we're covering an old movie that's, you know, almost 40 years old because I guess after, you know, after a couple of decades, people start spilling all the, all the dirt on what happened behind the scenes. So first of all, King himself, the quote was in an interview, he said,
He was quote, coked out of his mind all through production and really didn't know what he was doing. So that's his own admission. ⁓
I think that's
evident too once you watch the movie.
yeah, I think they should show this movie to kids to convince them not to do drugs because, yeah. And in hindsight, almost every scene, like I could just imagine this coked out dude being like, you know, it'd be awesome. Let's blow this up and then, you know, whatever.
Yeah.
This coked out guy who has no idea what he's doing and has complete control.
Yeah, exactly.
And then it blew my mind to read an interview with another person on set who was like, I never really saw King do Coke, but he was drinking throughout. We would start at 6 a.m. and he was already drunk and he'd be like 10 beers in at like 8 a.m. or 10 a.m. or something. I don't know. It was just like.
my God.
It was a Wade Boggs situation there on set, seemed like.
The 80s were good to Stephen King, I guess.
man, yeah. And so, I mean, that was part of it. It also seemed like there was a lot of ⁓ clashing between King and the producer on this movie. did you read who King wanted to play the lead?
Yeah, Bruce
Yeah,
who had never been in a movie before.
Yeah, apparently the studio was like, need to get a real actor for the lead role in your directorial debut.
Yeah, and so they got Emilio Estevez because the producer had worked with Martin Sheen, who's Emilio's dad. And I read somewhere that apparently that was kind of the start of the rift between King and the producer. That King was just like, you know, basically screw this project after that. before shooting, I guess, I don't know.
Yeah, and this producer apparently had experience working on a lot of these types of low budget ⁓ B movie type films and it was even too much for him, it sounds like.
Yeah.
Well,
know, he, was a big part of the marketing of this movie. And so he really wanted King on as director and he paired him with a cinematographer that was really experienced and try to put like experienced people around King. but it just seemed like there was a lot of friction. the cinematographer only spoke Italian. ⁓ yeah. And the people were talking about how no matter what you asked him, he would just say, yes, yes, yes. Like, and.
That's what it sounds like, yeah.
there was a translator on set who didn't speak Italian. It was a little confusing to me. The producer hired a translator that he thought knew how to speak Italian, but he couldn't. Like, that's, mean, great interviewing skills, I guess, if you can get that job. But.
Ha ha ha.
Yeah.
This was a
year after breakfast club for Emilio too.
Yeah. ⁓
the year before was breakfast club and St. Almost fire. So he was like coming off, you know, two, two hot movies. ⁓ so one other thing about the cinematographer, it's kind of sad because, so there's a scene with a lawnmower and, they're shooting this lawnmower from like low to the ground. And the cinematographer was like, look,
Yeah.
Yeah.
let's take the blades out of the lawnmower because it's not safe to shoot. And King was like, no, we need the blades in there. So it's real. So it seems real. And the cinematographer is like, you can't even see the blades, like the angle that we're shooting. But King insisted and a, wood chip or whatever, like clip, you know, got clipped by the lawnmower and got shot into the cinematographer's eye and he lost his eye during this movie.
Yeah.
And I mean, it's just batshit because I was expecting this big scene from the movie. It's just like a five second shot of a lawnmower that really didn't, it wasn't pivotal. this guy, this is his livelihood and he lost his eye.
Yeah, I didn't know about this until I read about it after I watched it. And I was like, why? Why would they have blades on that thing? It's a five second shot of, it's nothing. It's just a remote controlled lawnmower. You don't see the blades. There was no need for it. So I had all of the same questions that the cinematographer did when he was talking about why we should not do it this way. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I guess he must have been coked out of his mind and wouldn't take no for an answer.
It really made me wonder about a lot of the other scenes because there's a, there are a lot of trucks blowing up in this movie. just a lot of shit blowing up in general. And, you know, I was just wondering like, how safe was any of this? Like I could just see this being a ragtag group of people with sticks of dynamite running around, ⁓ North Carolina.
Yeah, it's a little bat shit.
Yeah. sure we'll talk a lot more about King and some of the other producer stuff throughout the movie, but, why don't we get into talking about the premise? So you want to explain briefly the premise and what you thought of it?
Yeah, so apparently the earth is traveling through the tail of a comet that's causing some supernatural events where it's not just vehicles, it's kind of everything that's mechanized gets sentient and turns on humans for some reason. I think that with a lot of Stephen King stories, there's supernatural elements that just aren't
Yeah.
really explained. You just take them at face value that this happens and ⁓ I'm fine with that. But this was based off of ⁓ a short story that he wrote. I think that you can kind of tell it was a short story. It maybe should have been a short video instead of a long form film.
Yeah.
like
a Twilight Zone episode.
It would be a great Twilight Zone episode. I know he wrote Twilight Zone episodes, at least one. So yeah, I think it would have been better as that, but it kind of starts with this drawbridge that takes a life of its own and starts raising while people are still on it. And I thought that was kind of a fun scene. I think that 80s stunts are awesome. I love 80s action movies.
You know, they're really crashing cars and people are flying out of windows and It was it was kind of fun. I like the opening I was I was in for it
Yeah.
Yeah, I didn't like that scene. don't know if it was the directing or what, but I was kind of lost in a sense of place of where are these people in relation to the overall scene and the bridge falling?
this bridge is drawbridge is opening. so everyone's like sliding back in their cars or like falling out of cars, but it kept happening at weird angles. So I was like, you know, somebody would fall into the water and then it was like, somebody else would fall into the water later. And I was like, wasn't that person like behind, I don't know. It was just kind of like cut in a way that it was, I felt like the directing wasn't great in that scene, but
Yeah ⁓
I understand what you're saying. was, it was very, lot of practical effects at least, you know, we'd get some CGI slop these days that, would be bad in other ways.
There was this scene where a guy on a motorcycle is the first one to really eat it and he's sliding on his ass down the slope of the bridge, but then he falls into the water, which doesn't make sense because...
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, because
yeah
You'd think you'd have to be falling up to get to the gap. ⁓ Yeah, but it's really funny because it's one of those metal roads that it just grates his ass off.
Right.
yeah, I did see that
like he had his pants were missing there.
Yeah, yeah, I think it was obvious that this was a director's first attempt, but it was fun.
And it was, there were like shots
of this watermelon falling through the roof of, and it was like, I don't know, how would that, why would that travel around to go through the skylight of the car? I don't know, the moon roof. Yeah, yeah. Just stuff flying around willy-nilly.
No, somebody clearly hucked that watermelon.
Yeah,
Yeah, I had a bit of a problem with the premise just because it didn't feel very consistent. Like I think I can accept a premise that doesn't make sense. One, if the rest of the movie is good and when it's not good and it doesn't really serve the movie, I'm then I'm questioning the fundamentals. But then I also just kind of want it to be consistent. Like I can believe that a comet
can affect machines on earth. Fine. mean, I don't need to know the science behind that, but I felt like throughout it wasn't, it wasn't clear what was a machine and what wasn't and why. So it seems to affect sprinklers, which doesn't feel like a machine to me. If there's no, uh, I don't know, there's no energy or moving parts. Um, it affects gas pumps. Uh, it affects semi trucks, but it doesn't affect the cars that people are driving.
some of them at least, some seem to kill people and some don't. And so was just kind of all over the place of what was affected by this comment and what wasn't.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's several scenes of people attempting to make their escape from a vehicle in a vehicle. So why wouldn't their vehicle be affected?
Yeah.
Yeah. one of the first scenes we get is, ⁓ we see, Giancarlo Esposito. think, I think that's how it's pronounced, but I'm not sure. Gus Fring from Breaking Bad, very young. should I say?
a much worse actor than he is in Breaking Bad. He's a
What's Breaking
Bad? know I'm from Better Call Saul. What's Breaking Bad?
It's a, it's, it's just a, you know, a prequel sequel. anyway, he's in this arcade at the truck stop and one of the machines hypnotizes him and then electrocutes him, which was just a weird, like there's, there's inconsistent, things that the machines do. Like, you know, some of them just.
hmm.
you know, the trucks just drive and then something seemed to get powers beyond what they have within capability of the machine itself.
there's a little league baseball game and the coach after the game is like, soda's on me. And he goes to the soda machine and it starts shooting cans out at like mock speed, killing people, which there's no function within a vending machine that would allow that type of. ⁓
Yeah. ⁓ man.
Yeah.
Yeah,
I'm pretty sure the soda cans just fall out of them. There's nothing that propels them towards the customer.
Yeah.
Yeah, and it kills the coach and maybe some of the kids
it definitely kills the kids there. There. I mean, I wrote down there three dead kids in the first 10 minutes of this movie, two of them from the soda machine. And then where are going to talk about the steamroller? We see a kid get steamrolled in the movie. I'm like, holy shit, this is dark.
Yeah.
Yeah,
long way to from the feet up. ⁓
Yeah, yeah,
the long way.
Yeah, it was good. then so one kid makes his escape on a bike and he's riding home through this, you know, supposed to be this serene neighborhood, but the streets are just lined with dead people. cars crashed into trees, but there's things that don't make any fucking sense. Like there's a dead dog with a toy car in its mouth. Like what could that toy car have possibly done to kill a dog? ⁓
Right. Yeah,
it's like these machines got superpowers as well as kind of going crazy.
And throughout the whole movie, everybody dies in the most cinematic pose, like they're hanging out windows with blood all over them. And like, what were they doing that they died in that spot? ⁓
all examples
of what Coke does to you. It's like, hey, you know, it'd be awesome if we showed a dog with it.
You
Yeah, there's just dead people all over the place and I can't tell how half of them died. There's no mechanism in the device that killed them that would allow that to happen.
logically through most of the movie, you would probably just unplug a lot of these machines and you'd be fine.
do you have any thoughts on how you would fix the story or the premise? I mean, you didn't seem to have much of a problem with it, but curious if you had thoughts about it.
Well, unfortunately, hire a better director, I think. It either needed to be like a shorter, tighter package or it needed to be fleshed out more with some character development, which character development is like Stephen King's bread and butter. That's what he does the best. And it had kind of a surprising lack of that in this movie.
Ha ha.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Ben, you can only watch empty tractor trailers drive around a gas station so many times before you're like, okay, let's move it along.
Yeah, I think one of the most surprising things for me was that I get it if Stephen King didn't have any experience directing and you know, there was, I guess a director has so many roles and obviously, you know, say and power over the product. But I was surprised at how weak the story was. for, you know, Stephen King, who's one of the greatest writers.
⁓ of all time. Where was the writing in this movie? I mean, the dialogue was terrible. I have plenty of quotes that I'd like to cover. But it did see, I mean, they were weak and the dialogue was weak. The story was weak. It was like, here's the premise and then let's just draw out the premise and just continue to see machines come to life. And then
movie just kind of ends and and the the rest of the story is kind of is told through a title sequence in the epilogue like what happens at the end I mean there just wasn't much story in this movie
Yeah.
There was a lot of text at the end of the movie to explain why it's ending now.
Yeah.
Also, and I'll quit saying this, but also the text written by somebody on Coke. It was just like, like, Hey, there were UFOs and the Russian spy satellite.
Yeah, the
UFO part was completely unnecessary. So the premises were in the the tail of a comet that's going to pass in seven days. So it's going to end at some point. But then they throw in this part in the epilogue that's like a Russian satellite that secretly had weapons on it, shoots down a UFO. What did that have to do with anything?
you
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, it was bad shit. But I do, there was some dialogue midway through the movie where one of the characters just out of nowhere is like, I think that comet is a broom. I think there are aliens looking for planets to occupy and the comet like sweeps up the life from the planet. I mean, this, character, she's a hitchhiker that I don't know. Like,
She called
it.
Yeah,
I mean, just from the faintest of evidence about what is even happening in the greater world. most of the movie takes place in this truck stop where people have been stranded and essentially captured by these sentient semi trucks. the radio's not working. They're cut off from the outside world.
So to even like know what's happening beyond, the several hundred feet that you could see much less like what's happening across the world, it's just implausible, but yes. So I think the whole UFO thing is confirming her theory.
Okay, well, I did hear the broom comment and I was, I mean, I was kind of in and out of this movie, to be honest. I heard the broom part and I was like, I don't know what the fuck she's talking about. And the other thing is she just heard a tiny snippet on the radio as she was coming in because the radios were on the fritz and she just heard like, you know, get off the highway, that stuff is becoming sentient. How could she have formulated that theory that there's aliens involved and
Yeah.
Yeah, no idea.
and
basically there are about a dozen plus people at this truck stop, right? And we really only see action from like three or four characters. It's really weird. I mean, it's not just character development, but it's also like, there are just a lot of extras just hanging out, drinking beer in this truck stop.
doing anything to save the other people.
Yeah, they needed some people to stand there and take bullets in the chest for a few shots. ⁓
Yeah.
And then we have other characters like the newlyweds who find their way to the truck stop. What did you think about the newlyweds? ⁓
I loved the newlyweds. ⁓
it was was Yardley Smith who plays Lisa Simpson on The Simpsons was one of the newlyweds and then her her new husband Kurt or something like that. I thought they were hilarious. they're just driving back from their wedding. It seems like they're on to their honeymoon and they stop at a gas station.
and find somebody who was killed there and they realize something's up and then a truck comes alive and tries to kill them. And there's this big chase scene as they're getting away in their vehicle, which is not affected by the comet. And the husband says, I think I just loaded my pants. Yeah, I thought that they were funny. I liked them.
Yeah.
you
Yeah.
Oh man, she, she graded on me. mean, I, uh, like her, her dialogue was terrible. I mean, they get to that, that gas station and she's just like, Curtis, is he dead? Are you dead? No. Uh, yeah. Yeah. Curtis gets attacked and she's just like, are you dead?
And he never answers her.
He's already foot tired of her shit, I think.
How long do think that marriage is gonna last?
He seems to love her. I don't know. I think it's, I think it can go the distance. They've survived the events of this movie. There's nothing that can tear him apart.
Ha ha ha.
I mean,
I guess maybe brought them closer, but she's just bickering at him the whole time.
haha
He's got he's trying to make the escape in their car and he's he's got the thing pegged and he's only doing like 85 miles an hour and the truck is catching up and she's like, knew I shouldn't have let you drive.
Yeah, exactly.
He could do nothing right. And then, and then later when he's trying to be a hero with Emilio Acevedo, she's just berating him for trying to help save another human being. And she's like, you know, doesn't want him to go.
Yeah.
I can understand that though. She's like, don't make me a widow on our wedding day.
I mean, sure, but yeah, that I.
There's other people who could have stepped up. Why did I have to be Curtis?
I mean, every single scene they're giving her like lines, even in the background, like, is there escaping through the tunnel? She's just like, don't let me fall. It's like the most bitchy dialogue you could think of.
You
It's Lisa Simpson with a southern accent
Yeah, and turned up to 11 turned up to 11
Yeah, she talks a lot. Yeah,
I liked him. What did I felt like Emilio Estevez, at least in the first like 20 minutes, his dialogue was really flat and it sounded like muted or quiet. Everyone else spoke at a normal volume and it sounded like he was whispering into a microphone across the room.
Yeah. ⁓
I was curious about his performance. think I read something later where he said this is the one movie he regrets doing. it seemed like he was, are parts of it where he was really into the role and the character. And then parts of it where, it seemed like he was a little bit lost. And I think you had different actors essentially in different movies.
Mm-hmm.
You had the, you know, that, that woman kind of this really eccentric had Bubba, the boss who was in this like cartoonish role next to Emilio Aceves and Emilio was like really trying to like channel his, you know, the like bring realism to his character. And then you had the cigar chomping boss who was just like literally cackling like a villain.
Mm-hmm.
He's a cartoon
villain, yeah. Twisting is...
Yeah, yeah, he's just like, ha ha ha.
Exactly.
Yeah, if the vehicles weren't the villains, he would have been the villain. His whole thing is hiring people on parole so that they can't tell him no, because they have to go back to jail if they quit their job, basically, so he can treat them like shit.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was a weird like
kind of theme or subplot that didn't really go much anywhere, but yeah.
No, he
didn't have like a redemption arc really, and he didn't truly become the villain either. He was just a shitty guy.
No.
Yeah. mean, these along the theme of these characters, not being well drawn, Bubba, which was confusing because he's credited as Bubba, but he calls everybody Bubba. So I don't know. That's a really weird choice to be like, I'm going to call it. Yeah. I'm going to call everybody by my own mind, my name. mean, how egotistical do you have to be?
Yeah.
Also his license plate is Bubba.
Yeah, that is super weird.
and it was super weird to they, there's a plot point where Bubba has been hoarding, I guess, this cache of guns and grenade launchers and stuff like that. But I don't know why or what they were trying to, I mean, they're just trying to make him like kind of one of those. Yeah. everybody was kind of a cartoon character.
stereotype.
I think that Stephen King often has characters that seem like stereotypes, but usually there's some character development with them that you kind of realize you can't shoehorn them into this specific thing that there's more to them than meets the eye. With Bubba, it's no, he's just a hillbilly asshole with rocket launchers in the basement.
and he does not care about anyone but himself.
Yeah.
Yeah. we won't talk about every character, but can we talk about another one of the worst characters? The Bible salesman.
He is my least favorite character in the movie for sure.
Yeah, he just starts out. He's, he's giving this hitchhiker ride, the, the main woman in the movie and he's just, at a hundred percent the whole time, asshole nonstop, grabbing for her crotch. Yeah. Yeah. In the car and, you know, trying to sell people Bibles at the truck stop while with his mouth full of food. It just, I mean, the
Sexual predator. Yeah.
all the like little choices that the actors or whoever made. Yeah. Yeah. And then he gets, when he gets hit by the truck, did you notice how it seemed like it was shot in a way where he like, he jumped into the truck, but they try to make it seem like the truck was going to hit him. It was just really cheesy. And then
and his brown teeth. I hated him.
You
A lot of
the deaths were that way, where people just kind of stood in front of the vehicle while it hit them. I like just move to the side.
Yeah.
Yeah, and then they show his shoes left behind like it knocked him out of his shoes. I mean, was like King was trying to make a cartoon.
Yeah, and all of the deaths were very bloody, which I liked. kind of, you know, I was into that. But yeah, there was a lot of blood in this movie.
Yeah.
One of the worst or funniest deaths, I guess, was the waitress who just starts shouting, we made you, we made you at two different scenes in the movie. Like, and just, guess loses it because they've been barricaded in this truck stop for so long. And then she just screams at it as a machine gun just cuts her down.
Yeah, I had her down as my second least favorite character. She gets attacked by a, like a electric knife at the beginning. cuts her arm. but, and then she just loses her shit. And I, I couldn't tell if the we created you thing was meant to be, kind of a theme about like it's the eighties and people are kind of afraid of technology and things, you know, like war games is coming out and
Yeah.
Yeah.
and those
types of people are worried about sentient technology, I guess. But they didn't explore that very much in this movie. It seemed like it was kind of in the background the whole time, especially with her and the we created you stuff or we made you. But yeah, it felt pretty flat and I wasn't sad to see her get gunned down, to be honest.
Yeah, by the way, did you catch there was a brief clip where it seemed like her and Bubba were an item? Like they'd both came out of a room buttoning up their clothes.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I was a little creeped out by that scene.
Yeah. ⁓ but I agree with you. It seemed like this was thematically rich for exploring, our relationship to technology. I could easily see a version of this talking about AI and, know, our fears about how, how much, how reliant we are in technology. mean, you know, there are plenty of movies and works that have explored this, but,
It seemed like it was all set up for that and then not touched on at all except for her inexplicable freaking out and those lines. And that was it. mean, it was, we just saw a bunch of stuff happening throughout the movie, but not really any commentary or any depth other than trucks slowly running over people. And then occasionally people firing grenades.
Yeah.
launchers into the trucks.
Yep, that about sums it up.
That's the whole movie. Yeah.
I will say one positive thing. The trucks blowing up. Sometimes it didn't make sense why there were fireballs. You know, a truck veers off the road and falls in a ditch and then blows up in a fireball. But it looked pretty solid. I was like the effects on this, you Well done.
Yeah, from the trailer, when you watch the trailer, there's lots of explosions and gunfire and all this, you know, grenades going off. And you're like, this looks pretty fun and actiony and interesting. that's that's the the meat of the movie, really. And there isn't much to support the action like or to care about. Like the characters, you're kind of there's not really.
Yeah.
a very likable character in it. There's characters who are less shitty than others. Like Emilio is not bad. He's supposed to kind of be the heart of the movie, I think. There's a little kid, Deke, who he was the baseball player at the beginning who gets away. And his dad was killed at the gas stations here. But I felt nothing for him. I don't know if that makes me a bad person, but it was just like...
Yeah.
I-
I don't care about any of these characters. Any one of them could die and I don't care.
⁓ I felt like the kid was probably the best actor in the movie. Yeah. He, he actually had to carry a lot in terms of like that scene where everybody was dying and carry a lot of emotion on his face. And then when he learned that his dad died, well, Bubba basically says tough luck kid, tough break kid.
He was great.
Mm-hmm.
And his dad worked for Bubba. Like, he lost an employee and a coworker or whatever too. So he doesn't give a shit though. Yeah.
Yeah.
And he's just chomp. Yeah. He's just chomping on a cigar.
we do briefly get a love story, I guess, in the movie between the Milo SMS character and the hitchhiker. ⁓ yeah, Brett. Yeah. She, they're, they're under siege by these trucks and then, they sleep together and it just shows, you know,
Who's named Brett? Her name is Brett.
them in bed together and she she says I'll tell you one thing you sure make love like a hero.
She calls him hero a couple times.
Yeah, a lot.
And it was like, okay, I mean, whatever. But like, where are they having sex in this gas station? It wasn't really plain to me. By the way, this is a very horny movie. There was a lot of porn just in the like, it starts out with the people working at the bridge playing cards. And it's just, you know, well,
You
yeah.
The wall is covered in porno.
Well, that's at the truck station. I'm saying even at the bridge, they had these playing cards with naked women on the back of the playing cards. Yeah, that jumped out. And then, yeah, it's just really jarring. They cut to the scene of two people at the gas station. And it's just, yeah, a wall of por- They don't reference it at all, obviously. It's just in the background.
I didn't catch that.
And it's full nude porn, like it's, it's yeah, everything.
Yeah.
They show a character on the toilet and he's obviously like, you know.
We're forced to
listen to him take a very loud shit.
Yeah, while he looks at
this porno bag, which I don't know, you know, not gonna not gonna comment on what people do on the toilet, but it's a weird combination. Yeah. And yeah, it's just, you know, they had to have a sex scene for Emilio Estevez that didn't really make sense in the context of was that was that before after he crawled through the sewers, by the way?
⁓ I felt like I was coked out of my mind.
Mm-hmm.
think it was before.
Okay, that would have made her even weirder, I guess.
Yeah,
that would be kind of gross sex after the scene in the tunnel. Which the scene in the tunnel, did you notice how bad the lighting was in that scene? So he's crawling through this wet sewer basically, and he's got a flashlight with him as the only source of light in the tunnel. But you can tell it's clearly being lit by somebody just off to the side of the camera.
Yeah, it was.
Hahahaha
He's moving this light around and like when Emilio turns around and the room isn't lit, he like panics and turns the light off. It's just super badly done. Yeah, there's a lot of that kind of shit in this movie.
Hahaha
That's so funny.
we've kind of bounced all around. don't, I don't think we need to tell anymore about the plot. I guess to finish it off real quick, they escape to this Marina and there's kind of some yada yada-ing of we'll take this boat with no motor out to this remote Island. Maybe they can go to the Island from the Wicker Man, where there are no machines.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
⁓
but, it just kind of ends like they, I mean, none of the, none of the boats with motors seem to come to life to chase them. It's just the green goblin truck comes at them one last time and they blow it up. And that's the climax of the movie. falls pretty flat.
Yep.
this would have been a great bottle episode of The Twilight Zone, like you said, because the whole thing takes place at the gas station. There wasn't like if it had been a 20 or 30 minute episode, it probably would have been much more interesting. yeah, my my notes for the Marina escape or that it was a mercifully short climax. I was ready for it to be over.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't understand the importance of the goblin truck. It's just to look cool, I guess. But he's not like special or extra in any way other than he's got a big goblin face on the truck.
Yeah.
No, it just looked cool. I mean, I had a note asking if that's legal to do that. could you just outfit your... So this truck, I mean, it's well designed. It's great. You know, it's a great set piece, if you'd call it that, but it's a happy toys truck. Like that's the brand, but it's like the, you know, the front is this creepy ass green goblin mask that like has eyes of light red and the back is this creepy clown. Like there's no...
Yeah.
Hahaha
Whatever the happy toys company is like it's, it's not selling toys. It's, know, yeah, exactly. it's owned by a Frankie phase on, as the actor that plays the owner of that truck. He's, he's in, ⁓ he's in a bunch of stuff. He's in, coming to America and, I don't, yeah, great things over the years.
It's selling nightmares.
Mm-hmm.
Character actor.
I loved the truck. If I were a truck driver, that's how I would deck my rig out like that.
Yeah, there's no way that's that's a street legal though.
That's a shame.
Why do they hide Giancarlo's body? Bubba just decides, he sees him get electrocuted and is like, we better put him in the cellar.
Yeah, before they knew that like shit was kicking off, he was ready to hide that body. It wasn't like there's going to be a lot of bodies, so we should probably find a place for them. He was immediately like, hide it. It was the first death and he didn't. It wasn't even like we should call the authorities. Somebody died at my stop. No.
You
Yeah.
It was not even remotely his fault. He wouldn't be held liable for that. He was just
like, I mean, this is clearly somebody who's like, on edge. Yeah, exactly.
He's hidden a body or two before. He's
probably hidden the body of a black person a time or two before. I can get those vibes from him.
Yeah.
I forgot about during the sex scene. Did you notice they're laying in bed next to each other and Emilio Estevez wipes her sweat with his forefinger and licks it twice? I was like, that's a weird choice.
No, I didn't catch that.
I mean...
Eugh. ⁓
I don't like that.
Yeah, I had to rewind because I was like, is that actually what I thought he did? And yes, he twice licks your sweat.
You
There's also a
scene with the newlyweds where they're in a booth at the truck stop and it seems like she's maybe giving him a handy under the table.
Yeah, it wasn't clear and then but there are a bunch of people around. There's somebody in the booth across like in the same booth right across from across the table from them.
There's a ton of people around. Yeah, it was weird.
Yeah, very horny, maybe.
I noticed the scene after the kid realizes his dad is dead. It's like the morning after. And the kids just sitting there in a booth blowing bubbles. I don't know.
that King or whoever knows what kids do to like pass the time. So it's just like he's blowing bubbles inside the gas station. And then the scene, I don't know if you remember this, but it just struck me that there's like a there's a guy laying in a booth asleep with a sandwich on his shirt, like on his chest. And like he's fallen asleep while he's mid eating the sandwich. And then just guys like draped across like
Hahahaha
Yeah.
chairs falling asleep in these weird awkward positions.
Just lay on the ground.
And then this guy like bust through like the swinging saloon doors and just says, what the fuck is going on here? Like out of nowhere. I don't know who that character was. And maybe that was his only line, and I don't know who he was talking to or what he was referencing, but it was just this weird like set up
Yeah, there's a lot of things that just don't make sense. I know you mentioned that the dialogue is really bad. I didn't think it was that bad, but there are a lot of things that didn't make sense. If there was a little clunky at times. And I think like by now this movie is 40 years old. A lot of dialogue in 80s movies is dated by now. So I just kind of chalked it up to kind of, I don't know, there's like an earnestness to 80s movies.
⁓ and an optimism in them generally. So characters from 80s movies generally don't reflect today's values and outlook, I think. So I didn't mind the dialogue, but there were things like that where somebody says something that I'm like, what the fuck are they talking about?
I had some notes during there's this big scene where the trucks run out of gas and then they essentially, yeah, they threatened to kill everybody unless they get fueled up and then they show Emilio Estevez and everybody fueling them up and Emilio has like all these blisters on his hand and he's like,
Feed me!
tired to the point of collapsing and I'm like, why are they so tired? He's just sitting there pumping gas. Don't people like do that all day and not? mean, it didn't seem like it was. ⁓ He was a fry cook. I think. I don't know. He. Maybe he did a couple things, but.
You're just standing there pumping gas.
Yeah. Him. ⁓ He works there. He's a mechanic there at the truck stop.
I thought he was a mechanic.
yeah, he was cooking at the beginning, wasn't he?
But that seems like a lot harder job to like stand over a hot stove all day than than pump gas. I don't know.
Yeah.
And the threat the whole time was not so much the trucks because they were kind of limited in what they could actually do. But there was this little cart it was a cart that just had a machine gun mounted to it that was following them around, threatening to shoot them if they didn't pump gas. So that's why they had to.
And it was, it was weird on two levels. One, I didn't really understand why that machine gun was sentient to under the whole idea of machines coming to life. But, also why, why were the trucks just circling around the whole time anyway? Like, what was the purpose other than to make the movie longer? Because like, why didn't, if they're, if their intent was to kill people at the end, they all attack the gas station.
They flatten the whole
place.
Yeah, yeah, like, why couldn't they do that? Why couldn't that they do that from the beginning? They could have killed everybody and moved on without running out of fuel, but instead they're just driving around in circles for 24 hours.
They had that ability.
I don't know. And there's some kind of inconsistencies because he, they talk to the machines at several times and it seems like they can understand and the little machine gun cart beeps out Morse code to talk to them. So, but they also openly talk about their plan to escape in front of them. So I can't tell if the machines can understand the humans or not.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And also, it's kind of trying to touch on this idea that we created them to serve us, but then they need us to serve them to keep them alive. I don't know, it was like they were trying to introduce some theme there that I couldn't figure out what it was.
But it doesn't matter because in the end it's actually aliens that's controlling them to try to kill the humans to create room on planet Earth.
You
And
if the point is to just kill everyone, just flatten the place at the beginning, they had a bulldozer that took a wall out, that could have just taken the whole place down. Like why play this cat and mouse game with them for days? ⁓ Just... And so also like airplanes were affected. You could just crash planes into every single building.
Yeah.
Yeah, it didn't make much sense.
Like, don't get it.
Yeah.
Did you notice where the airplane ended up by the way that we see flying around? There's a brief shot at the end when they're going to the marina of a school bus and the airplane just vertically into the school bus, which I thought was pretty dark. I mean, it also wasn't clear is the school bus sentient or they're just a bunch of kids in the school bus and that's, you know, where the airplane went.
No, where'd go?
I did see that, yeah.
I don't know, a lot
of the machines seem to kill themselves just to kill the occupants. So why didn't the bus just drive into a lake? Why kill two machines to take out?
Yeah.
You
it just, I don't know, looks cool, I guess. Yeah. Doesn't make much sense.
Yeah.
There was a lot of that in this movie. What do you think about the soundtrack?
it was all ACDC because that's Stephen King's favorite band. not, not my genre of music. What'd you think?
The whole time I was like, Adé's gonna think this is Journey. ⁓ Because you think every classic rock band is Journey.
Hahaha
Is ACDC classic rock? Isn't that metal? Okay.
yeah.
mean, so ACDC is like early metal kind of, ⁓ they have, they have some metal elements, but they're definitely a rock band. yeah, I, I liked it. I, they wrote some original songs for this, who made who, is the title track and the name of the album. ⁓ I listened to the album. It's not bad. It's not their best album. It has some,
Yeah.
Okay.
of their actual hits from other albums like Hell's Belles, isn't it? And you shook me all night long. So I didn't know that ACDC had ever done a soundtrack for a movie. And when I saw that at the beginning, I was like, nice. This is kind of neat. And it was catchy. I thought the music was fine.
Yeah.
I recognize one song. Does that help? Is that good?
⁓
Yeah, I'll give you credit for that.
Alright, there we go. I recognize
the song.
Yeah.
Oh, did you notice that Brett, the lead woman, said the first scene she's dressed in a hat and jeans and a shirt, and then she changes in the middle of the movie to a dress and they give her some dialogue. Like she was like that Bible, you know, the Bible salesman was had his hands over over me and I don't want his smell on me. Did you feel like that was weird in the moment?
Mm-hmm.
⁓ I thought it was a little weird, but what grossed me out the most was that she was in this truck stop bathroom barefoot changing her clothes. And I was so grossed out by that. I couldn't get past it. We just saw the guy take the noisiest shit imaginable in there. She's walking around barefoot.
⁓ Yeah.
But I thought it was really weird for the character to, yeah, you know, in the middle of this crisis, basically get into a dress. But I read afterwards it was because the producer of the movie saw like that first scene and was like, no, I don't want our lead heroine to have that much clothes on. She needs to look sexier. So it was basically because the producer was like, yeah, she needs to look sexier.
Feminize yourself that way?
Mm-hmm.
⁓ no.
throughout the rest of the movie. So they didn't, they didn't reshoot the first scene. No, no, it's terrible. I mean, this is, this is, ⁓ yeah, it's the eighties. mean, yeah, I was just like, that's, that's just gross.
I don't like that. It's the 80s, I guess.
That's more gross than the barefoot in the bathroom, I think.
Yeah, I mean, yeah,
that's that's more gross than all the porn in the background too, maybe. I don't know. It's hard hard to compare.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's just crazy.
So what's your verdict?
I actually kind of liked it. I hate saying that after what you just told me about the lead actress, but I don't know. You could tell he was coked out of his mind. ⁓ It was definitely a really troubled production, and it sounds like there was a lot of conflict between the cast and Stephen King and Stephen King and everyone else. that shows.
no. ⁓
you
Yeah.
clearly in the end product. But as far as like the library of movies that we've watched for this podcast, it was watchable. I thought that the action sequences were fun. They didn't carry the movie. Nothing really carried the movie. It's an interesting premise. like I said, I think it would be a better episode of a TV show. And as my mom would say, it needed a good edit or a
Or maybe a director who wasn't cooked out of his mind I was gonna give it two stars, but after the the dress story I think I'll give it one star
Yeah, one star for me for sure. the story wasn't there. I didn't love the premise. thought, I thought it was boring. A lot of the movie. I mean, the action sequences were, were, you know, good and entertaining for those like, you know, one, two second clips of trucks blowing up, but that wasn't enough to, to carry the movie for me.
I think it needed to commit to either being like over the top campy funny or serious or I was just all over the place tonally. So yeah, one star for me.
What's your alt pick?
I went with Short Circuit. came out the same year as this movie. They're both movies about machines gaining sentience, kind of. But Johnny Five is lovable and fun and it's a much more fun movie to watch. It's got Ali Shidi in it, who's kind of part of the Brat Pack with Emilio Estevez at that time. Steve Gutenberg is in it from Police Academy. It's the same director as War Games.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which was almost my alternate pick for this, but yeah, it's a it's a much more fun movie
Yeah, I haven't seen that in a while. need to revisit that. Mine was Joyride from 2001. It's kind of a, I don't know, a small B movie thriller, I actually just watched it. It had been on my list for a while. It stars Paul Walker and Steve Zahn and it stars
Yeah.
Lily Sobieski who played Sister Honey in the Wicker Man that we covered last time. but basically the premise is these three are on a cross country road trip and a trucker is following them and terrorizing them not to give away too much in the movie, but it kind of does the
Jaws like thing of where you don't actually see the villain. You just see the truck. So I felt like it was a good alt pic for this because like the truck actually feels really ominous. I did like the green goblin truck in maximum overdrive, but it didn't, it didn't really feel scary or ominous. It was just, I dunno.
It looked cool, there is no payoff.
Yeah, exactly. But Joyride, it's probably a three star movie for me, but was enjoyable.
Are you gonna see the new Stephen King movie, The Long Walk?
⁓ I probably will. I don't know if I'll see it in theaters. It seems interesting. What about you?
feel the exact same way. Like I'm interested in it. I'm not sure if I'll see it in theaters, but I think that I will watch it.
I really like Hoffman, forget his first name, but Philip Seymour Hoffman's son stars in it. And I liked him a lot in La Courche Pizza and so I do want to see him in more stuff.
yeah.
Well, I think that's about all we can say about Maximum Overdrive. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Send us an email at theworstmoviepodcast.com with your questions, your feedback. Berate us about our pronunciation of actors and directors. That's all for now. I'm Ade
I'm Aaron, thanks for listening to the Worst Movie Podcast.