Synopsis
When a comet passes close to the earth, machines all over the world come alive and go on homicidal rampages. A group of people at a desolate truck stop are held hostage by a gang of homicidal 18-wheelers. The frightened people set out to defeat the killer machines ... or be killed by them.
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Cast
- Emilio EstevezBill Robinson
- Pat HingleHendershot
- Laura HarringtonBrett
- Yeardley SmithConnie
- John ShortCurt
- Ellen McElduffWanda June
- J.C. QuinnDuncan
- Christopher MurneyCamp Loman
- Holter GrahamDeke
- Frankie FaisonHandy
- 50
Miami Herald
Maximum Overdrive is the classic botch. Good idea, nice effects, bad pacing, porous script, no punch...Too bad. As usual, the premise has promise. [26 July 1986, p.C1] - 40
Los Angeles Times
Maximum Overdrive offers a variation on what has become a hopelessly hackneyed theme -- technology as monster. As long as King is tinkering with his crazed machines, the film sustains a certain amount of ominous tension, but as soon as the author turns his attention to his actors, the movie's slender storyline goes limp. It's dreary to the max. - 30
The New York Times
For the most part, [King] has taken a promising notion - our dependence on our machines - and turned it into one long car-crunch movie, wheezing from setups to crackups. - 30
Time Out London
A loud, obnoxious, single-idea schlocker...There's carnage galore, but minimal interest. King himself described it as a 'wonderful moron picture', and he was half-right. - 30
Variety
Master manipulator Stephen King, making his directoral debut from his own script, fails to create a convincing enough environment to make the kind of nonsense he's offering here believable or fun. - 25
Chicago Tribune
A mess of a movie, a no chills nightmare about what happens to a group of rubes at a Carolina truck stop when the machines go nuts. [29 July 1986, p.3] - 20
TV Guide Magazine
MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE doesn't work on any level. As a comedy it's obvious and asinine, as a horror film it's simply not scary, and as an action film it's a bore. - 10
Washington Post
Watching Maximum Overdrive is like sitting alongside a 3-year-old as he skids his Tonka trucks across the living room floor and says "Whee!" except on a somewhat grander scale...It's hard to even imagine a movie so impeccably devoid of everything a movie ought to include. [29 July 1986, p.C2]