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Alright, dammit. I'm stepping up to the plate and taking one for the team. The team is made up of the 13 year olds that live in all of us, no matter how old we get. And Maximum Overdrive is the kind of movie tailor made for adolescent males to marvel at whilst chugging caffeine laced sodas and overindulging in sugary junk food. It's a midnight movie masterpiece, a mid-80s drive-in classic. Stephen King should be proud of it, some of the best movies were made by coked-out directors! I mean the movie is called MAXIMUM F'IN OVERDRIVE!!! Apropos, it's got Maximum Overkill. It's got Maximum Overacting. And it's got Maximum Overtures (care of AC/DC!)
It is so insanely over the top and endlessly bloody that you would have sworn it was made by the Italians. This movie really has it all, I mean it starts off with an ATM machine calling a guy an asshole (Stephen King's cameo), then you have a soda machine taking out an entire little league team, a kid gets run over by a steam roller, people getting smacked in the face with the front end of a big rig, machine gun deaths that rival Scarface and The Wild Bunch, the list goes on.
The level of extremes even carries over to the cast, Pat Hingle is pissed off at everybody, Emilio Estevez is pissed off at the world, Laura Harrington's hair gets progressively bigger and bigger, and Yeardley Smith's voice can shatter glass and make dog's ears bleed. They make up the motley crew of survivors, doing whatever they can to avoid the machines' deadly warpath. The camaraderie among them being trapped indoors has since been seen in everything from Tremors to The Walking Dead.
Maximum Overdrive needs to be celebrated and appreciated for what it is, pure B-movie popcorn fun. It also needs to be mentioned that it's beautifully shot with great production values. The hard rock AC/DC soundtrack also adds to the experience. So sit back, tune into your 13 year old self, and enjoy a wacky, blood drenched Action/Sci-Fi extravaganza!
