‘Maximum Overdrive’ at 40: an ode to Stephen King’s cocaine-fuelled 1986 odyssey
If you’ve ever had the misfortune to be stuck in the kitchen at a house party at five in the morning listening to someone tell you their idea for an app, then you’ll know just how dangerous a drug cocaine can be.
Well, now imagine handing that person almost $10million and telling them to make a movie, which would lead you to the utter insanity that is Stephen King‘s Maximum Overdrive.
It can’t be argued that King is one of the foremost storytellers of our time; if anything, he is somewhat underrated due to the snobbery of some literary critics, but his genius is undeniable. Over more than 50 years, he has created some of the most incredible stories, and many have been made into movies just as astonishing, like The Shining, The Green Mile, Stand by Me and Carrie.
But even a genius will turn into an absolutely insufferable arsehole if you put enough Bolivian marching powder up their nose, and that’s exactly what happened to King in the 1980s. In fact, given his affinity for coke, it’s a complete wonder that he produced what he did in that decade, if not how prolific he was, because he was probably typing really quickly.
It was also the decade in which he got his reputation for being notoriously displeased with any big-screen adaptation of his books, even Kubrick’s The Shining, and there had already been plenty by 1986 when he decided he was perfectly capable of directing one himself, and gave it a go with the horror sci-fi Maximum Overdrive.
Loosely based on one of his short stories called Trucks, the premise of the film was bat-shit enough, and imagined a world where almost all bits of machinery, including vehicles, arcade games, lawn mowers and vending machines, become sentient and start viciously attacking humans due to the passing overhead of a magical comet. There was also something to do with UFOs, and aliens, and the Soviets, who knows, it’s nonsense, and it was the 1980s.
The film did at least have a competent and famous producer in the form of the Italian Dino De Laurentiis, although anyone would question his decision to hand King a three-picture deal, when the latter himself would admit that he was coked out of his mind attempting to make the movie and didn’t have a clue what he was doing. Others on set reported that the author would start drinking beer at six in the morning and wouldn’t stop even when everyone had gone home.
De Laurentiis had produced the relatively successful adaptation of King’s Firestarter in 1984, and was convinced Maximum Overdrive would have a similar impact on the box office. He had optioned a few more King stories, but made a fatal error when the author said, “I want to direct”, and De Laurentiis replied, “You should”. With Brat Pack star Emilio Estevez in the lead role, there was at least some young talent involved, but things started off badly when King turned up for filming and security wouldn’t let him in due to his dishevelled appearance.
Other problems came thanks to the fact that De Laurentiis had put an Italian cinematographer in place, who spoke barely a word of English, so the crew couldn’t understand. That same cinematographer, Armando Nannuzzi, was then hit in the eye by a stray piece of wood during a scene with a lawnmower and had to be airlifted to the hospital, where he lost an eye and would later sue King and the makers of the film for $18million, his career ruined.
There were even more surreal elements to the film, not least that King wanted to hire Bruce Springsteen to appear in it for some reason, plus Bart Simpson was in it (or rather Yeardley Smith, who voices him), and if that weren’t enough, the set was hit by a hurricane.
When it was finally released, the reception was disastrous, as critics savaged the movie; King was nominated for a Golden Raspberry for ‘Worst Director’, Estevez picked up another for ‘Worst Actor’, and it lost several million at the box office. Despite that, it has gained something of a ‘so bad it’s good’ cult status in the 40 years since, and King’s son Joe Hill has expressed an interest in remaking it.
As you’ll see from the completely unhinged trailer below, King was in a, shall we say, unusual place when he made Maximum Overdrive. And the movie is 98 minutes of that committed to film, with added cocaine.
