Lack of good storyline.

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Yes. Glorious line, innit? What I personally love about above expression of frustration and wonder is how clearly and thoroughly nonsensical it is. Who, pray tell, is the speaker directing the insult at? The car? I believe I read the short story of King's(or perhaps a similar one by another author), and I frankly see reason to attribute the aforementioned and other bits of silly and forced dialog(which is not all of it) in this to him. On the other hand, I haven't watched Maximum Overdrive, but I can imagine that it's better than this. So this plays upon our fear of, well, trucks, and other large, noisy machines that can crush us. We get a couple of Christine shots, and the concept is treated with a pretty considerable amount of respect, with the gradual build-up early on being somewhat reminiscent of such obviously superior pictures as The Birds. This backfires at times, as it leads to goofy sequences that are utterly impossible to take seriously. The editing and cinematography are standard. More coverage here and there would have helped loads. This does contain one of the funniest movie deaths of all time, and there are laughs to be had, if most are probably unintentional. There is some OK suspense and tension in this. The acting is lackluster. Several of the reasonably developed characters are obnoxious and just complain. The FX vary. On the whole, this is relatively satisfying if you don't expect too much from it, and the ending's not bad. There is a lot bloody(if a little of it looks ludicrously fake) violence and infrequent strong language in this. I recommend this to fans of the idea. 5/10

The biggest problem I have with some of Stephen King's stories is their complete lack of logic. It's as though he was getting paid by the word so he just made up situations without thinking about the reasons behind them."Trucks" is just such a story. It seems that all of a sudden the trucks in a town near Area 51 become animated and drive around on their own, stalking and killing humans. But why do they do it? We never seem to get a clear answer. It could be because of a toxic spill that they drove through, or it could be because they're occupied by an alien life force from a meteor or maybe they just got tired of being pushed around by all those redneck truckers.Whatever the reason, they can not only engage their own engines, but apparently shift their own gears, operate their own side-view mirrors and assorted latches, turn on their own headlights, and eventually learn to talk to each other by honking their own horns. They drive around in circles in a parking lot, holding a bunch of earthlings hostage in a luncheonette in the middle of the desert. But why? And if these trucks are that intent on destroying mankind, why don't they just drive into the building and be done with it and then move on to the next place? As far as the characters go, I was rooting for the trucks to do away with a few of them right off the bat, like the redneck trucker who stood around scratching his crotch. And then there was the King standby, the bratty, rebellious kid who didn't want to be there and did nothing but spout sarcastic comments for the first 40 minutes of the movie. But most of all I would love to have seen that 50-year-old hippie under at least eight of the semi's sixteen wheels. For someone who supposedly lived his life according to the "peace, love, and music" philosophy, it seems he embraced the establishment often enough over the past thirty years to swallow more than a few Big Macs along with his brown rice.I was confused as to why it was just trucks that were affected by this evil phenomenon, whatever it was; why not regular cars and lawn mowers and RVs too? And who was it who determined that the tractor-trailer should be the "leader of the pack"? And if helicopters were involved, why did it take so long for one to show up? Why didn't "Boss Semi" -- who was some sort of four-stroke Rasputin and kept on truckin' even after being blown up and burned to a crisp -- call him in long before the end? I'll bet the actors were told this movie was going to be the next "The Birds"; all I can say is that this movie was for the birds.

I guess it's safe to say that "loosely based" is a good thing. What I'm talking about is that, according to Wikipedia, Maximum Overdrive (which is an EXCELLENT movie) was "loosely based" on the short story "Trucks". I don't really know if this story was meant as a remake of MO, but it should have been left in the can and burned. The acting is deplorable, and overall just not worth wasting your time on. For a really good "killer vehicle" movie, take this back to the video store and exchange it for MO...you'll be glad you did. In fact, break the disc on the way there and tell them it was damaged when you got home..that way no one ELSE will make the mistake of renting it.

Stephen King's sole directorial effort "Maximum Overdrive" still qualifies as one of the single most horrible cinematic adaptations of his work to date. It's a total mess that's fatally undone by intolerably obnoxious nincompoop characters, sloppy plotting, and a simply dreadful sense of rancidly unamusing toilet bowl humor. Granted, the central premise -- a comet which brushes perilously close to the Earth's atmosphere somehow causes all the trucks to take on a murderously intelligent and malevolent sentient life of their own, with a bunch of demonic semis holding a motley assortment of people hostage in a besieged diner -- was promising, but King's messy, clumsy and horrendously diffuse (mis)direction and a narrative ridden with enough gaping plot holes to drive a Diesel through 'em failed to due said premise any justice.Fortunately, this second celluloid take on the short yarn "Trucks" rates as a markedly better and more effective picture: It's smart, absorbing and suspenseful, with sure, low-key direction, a tight, sharply focused script, a few nifty violent episodes (a mailman getting gruesomely snuffed by a vicious tiny toy dump truck provides a blackly funny highlight), a refreshing paucity of both needless pretense and equally unnecessary razzle-dazzle, a commendably straightforward, matter-of-fact, down-to-earth sober tone, realistic sounding dialogue, a genuinely eerie atmosphere of total desolation (the dry, dusty desert locations help immensely here), spare, unflashy cinematography, appealingly plain everyday country folks main characters, and a splendidly bleak surprise ending punching up the quality level to a finely high and well-sustained standard indeed. Timothy Busfield as an affable nice guy gas station proprietor and the fetching Brenda Bakke as the quick-thinking, level-headed heroine lead the uniformly solid no-name cast (Jay Brazzeau is especially engaging as gentle, philosophical old hippie Jack). Moreover, this film mean business throughout and doesn't play fair, actually going as far as to bump off some of the more likable characters. It's this latter element of grim seriousness that makes all the difference, thus enabling a fantastic premise to acquire a reasonable semblance of plausibility which in turn puts this feature over as a good little fright flick.