Tag: Stephen King

So I watched a George Romero film the other night, but did I just watch another one? Cos apparently a rumour persists that Maximum Overdrive is at least partly his work, given the substance abuse its nominal maker, one Stephen King, was apparently engaging/rampaging in while making it*… and King has apparently never confirmed or denied beyond saying Romero was always on set to offer him directorial advice on his first (and still only) feature film. Whatever. It’s odd, I admit, that I consider myself at least a bit of a horror fan, but despite that I have so little acquaintance with Mr King and his oeuvre… only ever read a handful of his books and seen a handful of the films made therefrom. I have at least partly rectified that tonight, I suppose…

Anyway, the Earth passes through the tail of a “rogue comet”, and all the machines on the planet start going mad. From electronic bank signs insulting people to vending machines dispensing drinks lethally, the world is in trouble; ultimately the story kind of settles down to Night of the Living Dead with trucks. Apparently the film was heavily cut to avoid an X-rating from the MPAA (even George Romero allegedly found the uncut film excessive, which is… interesting coming from him) and the end result was a critical and box office flop, earning a Razzie nomination for King and its nominal star Emilio Estevez (whose role King wanted to be played by Bruce Springsteen; that would’ve been something to see). The latter is not unfair, since Estevez is one of the film’s weakest links apart from certain logical problems (why doesn’t the newlyweds’ car go berserk like the trucks, why did the truck stop owner have so many explosive devices around his petrol station and how did nothing go off, what the fuck WAS the point of the Bible salesman “returning from the dead”), and the thing runs out of puff at the end, leading to a text epilogue describing an ending there obviously wasn’t time/money to actually shoot (for which matter, why didn’t those satellites fuck up too?)… but for all its undeniable faults, I had a reasonably good time with Maximum Overdrive; King may not have known what he was doing, but he made a fairly entertaining film despite himself.

*Regarding which: King himself says he was blasted on cocaine, but the on-set translator for producer Dino De Laurentiis’ Italian crew apparently said he never saw King doing the white lines but he did see him getting hammered on booze from early morning onwards. Was King so wasted he couldn’t even remember what he was wasted on?