The 1980s slowly morphed into the Decade of Stephen King. He could write a grocery list and it was probable it would be optioned for a movie. In the case of Maximum Overdrive, the Hollywood studios were down to breaking out King short stories and trying to turn them into feature-length films.
Written in 1973 for a magazine, “Trucks” was a short story dealing with the idea of trucks coming to life and attempting to take over the world. In the film it turns into the story of the Earth passing through the tail of a comet and all mechanized – and some non-mechanized machines – coming to life.
Yeah, I’m still trying to figure out why the M60 on the mule could fire on its own, but not the guns the humans were holding.
Over the Maximum Overdrive has turned into a cult film, but it lacked a collectors edition, or even a basic version, on Blu-ray. The new Vestron Video Collector’s Series release is hitting shelves on Oct. 23, and it’s everything you could hope for. The extras are almost as long as the film, and considering there are two commentary tracks, they actually surpass the film’s run time.
The extras run the gauntlet from behind the scenes footage to a rather lovely 30-minute video about how Wilmington, North Carolina became the Hollywood of the east in large part due to King films.
While a lot of the cast returns for video interviews about the film, the lack of even a small appearance by Emilio Estevez is rather glaring.
The film transfer has clearly been cleaned up and is presented well, but there is still some noise in the image and it looks very much like you would expect a mid-1980s film to look. The audio is crisp and clear, but don’t expect crystal clarity from the image.
This is an easy recommendation for anyone who enjoyed the film, and a strong candidate if you’ve ever wanted to check it out.
OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS
Get ready for the ultimate battle of man vs. bloodthirsty machine in this terrifying Stephen King classic! For three horrifying days, the Earth passes through the tail of a mysterious comet. The skies glow an eerie green as humanity waits to see what the fallout will be. But what they imagine is nothing like the nightmare they find — the comet’s magnetic fields cause all the machines on Earth to suddenly come to life and terrorize their human creators in a horrific killing spree. Now, it’s up to a small group of people trapped in a desolate truck stop to defeat the killer machines — or be killed by them!
BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES
- NEW: Audio Commentary with Writer Tony Magistrale, Author of Hollywood’s Steven King
- NEW: Audio Commentary by Actor and Comedian Jonah Ray and Blumhouse Film Executive Ryan Turek
- NEW: “Truck Stop Tales” Featurette – An Interview with Producer Martha De Laurentiis
- NEW: “Rage Against the Machines” Featurette – An Interview with Actress Laura Harrington
- NEW: “Honeymoon Horrors” Featurette – Interviews with Actor John Short and Actress Yeardley Smith
- NEW: “Maximum Carnage” Featurette – An Interview with Make-Up Effects Creator Dean Gates
- “A Kid in King’s Court” Featurette – An Interview with Actor Holter Graham
- NEW: “The Wilmington Factor” Featurette – A Look Back at the Filming of Maximum Overdrive with Members of the Production Crew in North Carolina
- NEW: “Who Made Who?” Featurette – An Interview with Murray Engleheart, Co-Author of AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll
- NEW: “Goblin Resurrectus” Featurette – The Restoration of the Happy Toyz Golbin
- Behind-the-Scenes Footage
- Still Gallery
- Theatrical Trailer
- TV Spots
Lionsgate provided us with a copy of Maximum Overdrive on Blu-ray for the purposes of this review. We watched the film and all of its extras before beginning this review.
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