Machines come to life and start killing people. Stephen King's cocaine fueled 1986 thriller Maximum Overdrive is still wonderful fun today.
A comet passes by our planet and suddenly all the machines go on the attack. Luckily Emilio Estevez is standing by, ready to kick 18 wheels of ass. Humans are idiots, the machines seem far more intelligent, and pissed off. There are lots of fantastic images of humans killed by walkmen, toy cars and hair dryers.
King famously admit to massive cocaine abuse during the writing and directing of this film, and it shows. King was quoted in Hollywood's Stephen King as saying he was “coked out of (his) mind all through its production, and (he) really didn't know what (he) was doing.” All that white powder gives us some hilarious scenes, such as the little league coach shot in the nuts by a soda machine.
The film's true star, however, is a Green Goblin masked truck. This sentient machine, based on a Spiderman character, really hates humans and is going to kill everyone trapped in the Dixie Boy truck stop. Luckily, there just happens to be a rocket launcher that hasn't turned into a thinking machine laying around. Gotta love cocaine!
The entire film is available to Amazon Prime customers. I did not see a free version publicly available.
Maximum Overdrive on Amazon Prime
