---
title: "Maximum Overdrive (1986) review"
description: "Cocaine-era Stephen King fans, this is our Super Bowl."
url: https://www.joekarlsson.com/reviews/maximum-overdrive/
---

![A still from Maximum Overdrive (1986)](https://www.joekarlsson.com/images/reviews/maximum-overdrive/backdrop.webp)

# Maximum Overdrive (1986)

Nov 2, 2026 | 2 min read | Rated 2 out of 5 | Dir. Stephen King

Cocaine-era Stephen King fans, this is our Super Bowl.

I have a special place in my heart for cocaine-fueled King. It’s the era when it’s clear he was losing his goddamn mind, and Maximum Overdrive is the most emblematic thing he made in it. He wrote it, he directed it (the only movie he ever directed), and he put AC/DC on the soundtrack, absolutely ripping the whole time.

Is it an absolute failure as a horror movie? Yes. Is it an unintentional comedy? Probably. Is it bad? Yes. Did I have fun? Also yes.

We’ve been afraid of machines taking over forever, and King is clearly trying to tap into that, just completely unsuccessfully. A comet passes Earth, every machine on the planet wakes up and wants us dead, and it’s so over the top and so crazy that none of it is scary.

The movie opens with King in a cameo, getting called an asshole by an ATM. Only a man on cocaine writes himself into his own movie so a cash machine can insult him, and the movie is at its best when it’s that petty and that inventive. The arcade cabinets electrocute Giancarlo Esposito. A soda machine takes out a Little League coach. There are so many machines in the world and so many ways to show them, and most of the movie is unmanned trucks circling a truck stop. It gets repetitive.

But goddamn, they crash a lot of shit in this movie, which is always fun. A drawbridge goes up under traffic and dumps everybody in the river. Pat Hingle fights the trucks with rockets. Movies in the 80s would just crash shit whenever they had the budget. Why don’t we do that more?

This is a bad movie. It’s a two-star movie that I’m giving a heart and a spiritual four stars, because it’s a fun watch.

Stray thoughts:

-   Another reviewer on here said Maximum Overdrive feels like an Alex Cox wasteland, which is well said. Emilio Estevez being in it helps, and my Repo Man love definitely seeped into this watch.

Also on [Letterboxd](https://letterboxd.com/joekarlsson/film/maximum-overdrive/)

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I write about my homelab, AI tools, databases, and the weird stuff I build on the side.

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