SCORETOBER!!!! Day 23 MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE!!!

Day 23

Maximum Overdrive

KYO-KANE!!!

Skiing the alps up your nostril.

The whitest Christmas

Americas cup of coffee

COCAINE!!!

This movie was MADE with cocaine, it was DIRECTED by high octane cocaine!

No I am not joking, I am not hyping anything. This film, the entire film. Was directed by Stephen King.

Who himself admits, openly now. “I was coked out of my mind the entire time, I don’t even remember making that movie.”

The man used to do so much cocaine he’d have to shove cotton up his nose to stop the bleeding.

This film was made during the peek of all this white snow madness. It is an absolute insane rock and roll thrill ride. People claim Toby Hooper did so much cocaine during the making of Poltergeist, that Stephen Spielberg had to step in and take over directing, which was B.S., Although Hooper did love cocaine. But seeing what King created WHILE doing ass loads of coke, compared to Poltergeist? Makes me kinda wish we got that sort of madness out of Poltergeist.

But here we are. A cautionary tale about technology turning on us, and turning us the masters into its slaves. Where even vending machines rise up and kill us, Hell even toasters and electric carving knifes are against us. It’s the end of our world, and the beginning of the Reign of the Machines.

As told by first time director Stephen King.

High off his ass.

This film is a goddamn gift. Screw people who hate it. It’s great and I can’t wait to share it with y’all. So lets get right in, roll up your George Washington and snort a line of freedom. Its go time.

The Movie

“On June 19th, 1987, at 9:47 A.M. EST, the earth passed into the extraordinarily diffuse tail of Rhea-M, a rogue comet. According to astronomical calculations, the planet would remain in the tail of the comet for the next eight days, five hours, twenty nine minutes and twenty-three seconds.”

With that, we are beginning our story at the 1st Bank of Wilmington, as the scrolling electric sign of the bank kindly notifies us all ‘Fuck you’, and as the one and only Stephen King takes to the scene, withdrawing money from the ATM, the machine tells him politely “You are an asshole”, and continues to repeat this until the screen is full. “This machine just called me an asshole”

God damn I love this movie.

We are just getting started folks, as machines begin to rebel against their creators, from the innocence of bank machines. To the more serious and dangerous large bridges now beginning to separate without warning. Droping cars to their death in the river below, and sending others tumbling back. It’s a great scene of absolute chaos. An unseen force pushing the button to raise a car bridge and dozens of cars suddenly left being tossed into the water, rolling backwards down the bridge killing people. Even poor AC/DC has their van and roadies destroyed!

Yes, AC/DC are not only appearing, their music is the entire score for this masterpiece. Which makes it even greater. COCAINE!!

But the biggest intro to the film, goes to the very truck that made the cover of the film, and is also the most impractical thing to ever have on a truck. It also would scare the shit out of any kid that saw it. It’s the Happy Toys truck, a toy company truck with a goblin face covering the entire front of the truck. Complete with red eyes. Because why not of course.

Meanwhile, inside the truck stop diner. Which I must say I do miss going to those. I wasn’t a truck driver, but our family used to travel a lot and we sometimes stopped in those places to grab some food. Somehow the sloppiest of those places could still end up serving the best chili.

Well its breakfast time so no chili for anyone!

While one of the gas attendants fuels up the evil goblin truck,  the pump suddenly decides it wants to protest feeding diesel. So the attendant decides this must be a clogged nozzle. So what else can a man do but the most manly thing he can? Yep. He looks straight down into the nozzle, digging around with a finger before he goes shoving his face right up to it, and what does he get? A face full of diesel! Immediately blinding him and as he screams we get our first cue of attack music! It’s like a mechanical version of the Psycho knife attack music.

This scene is of note, for one thing and one terrible thing only. It wasn’t really detectable before in its early vhs days, because film clarity was like looking through glasses rubbed with vasoline. But thanks to the beauty of 2k AND 4k now. We are greeted to something that would never in a thousand years make it past the MPAA without a lot of heavy editing and even heavier blurring. The other attendants move to lay the poor blinded man down, giving him a water rag over his eyes. As he his laid down. We see an entire wall, and I do mean. Entire wall covered top to bottom side to side, with full spread porn images. I am talkin fields of hedges, hills of breast and everything inbetween, if you know what I mean and I do believe you do.

It is rather, spellbinding, and you have to wonder how the hell something like that made it into the, oh. Yeah. Cocaine.

So moving back inside the diner, we are greeted to an Esteves. They used to be in a good deal of films back in the day, this time it’s an Emilio Esteves, and he’s a fry cook workin the grill for the man. But as he’s flipping eggs and doing a mighty fine job at it I should say. In the arcade at the end of the diner, a man is watching the machines lose their shit. Pinball machines are breaking themselves while setting their own high scores, arcade games are flashing random images while ye old ancient cigarette machines spit out packs upon packs of cigarettes, and change machines spew out thousands of endless quarters.

This man is now enjoying a life full of smokie treats and all the quarters he’ll need in life! Until he gets hypnotized by an arcade game, touches it and gets electrocuted to death. To death!!

Meanwhile poor Emilio is getting reamed by his boss Mr. Hendershot(Pat Hingle) in a not so pleasing fashion as he is told to work 9 hours while only clocking in for 8 of those hours, and he’s going to have to comply with these wishes because Emilio is on parole! That’s right. The man caught Billy the Kid and forced him into unfair labor while on parole. Well it might suck getting screwed over for work hours, but it beats getting screwed in the showers back at prison. So he complies. Realizing the guy he works for has a nasty habit of doing what most restaurants do and hiring a lo of work release people on parole.

Seriously I worked in a place that only ever hired work release guys for dish washing, cleaning and prep work, because our boss could effectively use them for whatever and they’d have to go along with it. It also saved him from paying normal wages so he was happy to cut some corners. The man was a walking journal of ‘fun’ life choices.

Well with Emilio in the back that means no cook is tending grill, so a poor waitress, Wanda June(Ellen McElduff) has to deal with the eggs. Which is the funniest thing watching as she’s trying to scramble sunny side up eggs and staring at the grill like a complete mystery. While she does so, a cordless electric carving knife begins buzzing to life and aims itself at her arm. Which it promptly cuts into! Causing her to bleed all over the grill, this 86’ng about 4 different meals. But that knife isn’t done yet. It didn’t want a piece of waitress, it wants the whole damn thing! As it lands on the floor it vibrates itself into a spin and begins sawing into her shoe!

Emilio hearing the screaming comes to her rescue, as they all watch the blade spinning and vibrating on the floor, declaring it must be a short. Emilio does the best you could back in the day when dealing with faulty electronics. He picks up a hammer and bashes the shit out of it. It works.

The funniest most random thing about this scene, is not any nudies thankfully. But the fact that you have a waitress, spilling out horrific amounts of blood. I mean that knife dug a good inch and a half into her arm. She is spilling heaps of blood everywhere, And two truckers just stand up, watching giggling “Oh what’s the matter darlin, did it up and bite ya? Must be a short fuse”

Like….motherfuckers, this lady is bleeding out all over the damn grill, the hells wrong with you?!

Truckers gonna truck I guess?

Well the diner isn’t the only one having issues. There’s trouble on the field as well. A little league game has just come to an end. The team is celebrating for its win as the losers take off in defeat. The coach declares he’s going to buy sodas for everyone! So he goes over to the machine and pops in a few bucks. Only the machine is not going to give up any cans that easily. The man begins bashing at the machine and kicking it like mad.

So the machine decides enough is enough! It shoots out a can at high speed right into the mans dick. As the team of kids laughs at him and his pain. As he crumples to his knees, the machine fires another can off into his gut, then another to his chest crushing his ribs, finally one last can delivers the killing blow. Shooting a can off into his forehead, immediately crushing a circular bloody ring into his skull.

With the machine now seeing a lot of witnesses on the field, it begins shooting out can after can at the young kids as they run for their lives. The baseball field is now a warzone. Kids bodies are dropping like flies. Only the catcher is able to survive thanks to his iron gate of a face mask. The kid takes off for center field only to find himself cut off as their scoreboard comes crashing down and a steamroller operated by no one comes flying out at full speed. The crashed sign knocking a kid off of his bike and to the field. The catcher is forced to watch as his friend is steamrolled over and. Not gonna lie, it’s pretty damn grizzly, and well done. It freaked me out as a kid, and I love it as an adult.

The catcher takes off onto his bike and rides away for freedom.

Meanwhile we have some new friendly faces making their way into this story. A hitchhiking drifter named Brett(Laura Harrington) and a very handsy touchy feely good Samaritan Camp Loman(Christopher Murney) are taking the most uncomfortable car ride together. As he can’t keep his hand off her denim thigh, and she tries ignoring him while playing with the radio trying to get some kind of music or news to play. She comes across a short snippet about a national emergency. But the signal quickly fades out, as if something didn’t want her catching that. She tells Camp they need to pull over to the gas station but he’s still focused on the possibility of them messing around. So she takes matters into her own hands and jerks the wheel, turning them into our local gas stop trucker diner. Where he proceeds, and I hate to admit it but rightfully to blow up in her face as the two exit the car. The man is ranting and raving about life, kindness and the uncaring nature of drifters which is so far away from what he could’ve actually ranted legitimately about. But Brett is tuned out and elsewhere. She’s paying less attention to his ravings, and more to the goblin truck behind Camp, revving its engine angrily. She notices the big rig take off toward them at full speed, she’s not a bitch so she doesn’t leave the pervert to die, she actually drags him to safety because she has a kind heart. Saving both their lives from the rogue truck attack. But just as everyone begins gathering to figure out what the hell happened and who could’ve driven the truck since its owner is in the diner. The truck stops moving and returns to being motionless.

Elsewhere headed for the same gas station, we meet a celebrity of the film. Connie, played by the wonderful  film actress though you’d all likely recognize her more as the voice of Lisa Simpson, Yeardley Smith.

She’s playing an all too happy newly wed driving along the road with her husband Curt(John Short), Curt talks about needing to find a gas station to refuel, and she agrees on the wise decision by her husband as she needs to use the ladies room. Her just married life partner and man she loves immediately grins and ask “Can I watch?”

Dude, you gotta wait like, at least a year before you go making that joke, also….nevermind, Back to the movie.

So the couple find a gas station but its not the right one. We know this because the gas station is vacant, and the only worker there is laying dead in a pool of blood. Also a tow truck attack these two. So yeah it’s a good time to get the hell away before more bad things can happen. So yes this couple is headed on a one way road to adventure and our films central meeting point.

On the other sie of town, our baseball catcher Deke(Holter Graham) is riding through a suburban hell scape. The neighborhood he called home is full of dead bodies. Women killed by hair dryers, dad by lawnmowers, kids crushed by ice cream trucks, and worst of all a doggo killed by a toy police car it chased down. The kid is trying to keep safe and out of sight from the menacing ice cream truck, only to end up getting his ass chased by a bloodied high powered lawn mower. Sending him as well on a road to destiny.

Back at “Gas World”, Bill is investigating the possessed truck, he can’t figure out why or what with anything about it. The truck seems fine, no one hot wired it or messed with it, but somehow it took off and tried running two people over. There’s no one hiding anywhere in that truck or its cab. Brett wonders off to check on Bill and. Well. She’s a complicated woman. She shares her affections with only those she chooses. As it should be. But after literally having met Bill for all of 30 seconds, she is standing outside with him just to tell him he’s cute, and the flirting has begun!

But that’s not why we’re here, oh no. Things are about to go down. In both the funniest and needed of horrors. Our poor gas attendant who was blinded, Duncan(J.C. Quinn) is stumbling around mostly blind, but he’s a mans man and he can’t be kept down. It’s hilarious because his poor friend tries to stop him and get him to lay back down. But he won’t have it. He’s headed home. His buddy tells him again to PLEASE rest a bit more, he can’t see! The camera gets us right into Duncans face and we see his eyes. Squinting, bloodshot, streaming tears of actual blood “I can see just fine”

This man, cannot see. Just. Fine. But you just try telling Duncan that!

The mostly blind Duncan is taking the keys to his car and ready to head out. But Hendershot isn’t about to let this go down. Either he actually cares about the man, or he just doesn’t want to be down a working hand for when things get busy. Who can say. But he’s warning Hendershot that if he clocks out, it’ll be the last time he clocks out for him. Duncan considers this and tells Hendershot to get bent! Duncan is headed out across the gas station to his freedom and manhood. Even if he can’t see a damn thing. It gets worse and even more evident when he fumbles with his keys and drops them to the ground. He can’t find them on the damn ground! So one of the trucks, feeling particularly generous decides to come over and help out. Only it forgot that it’s a diesel truck so when it tries to help out it just runs him over and kills Duncan. The truck panics and tries to turn itself around, ending up taking out our handsy bible salesmen Camp Loman’s beautiful new car!

It's a great scene, because we have Loman inside the diner trying to con Wanda and a trucker into buying one of his custom bibles, preaching how the book holds all the answers and words of the lord. As he looks outside and sees the truck take out his beautiful car he can’t hold back and loses his shit, “COCKSUCKER!” The waitress shoots up from the table to try and catch sight of what happened, but Loman pushes her back down “Out of my way bitch!” and the man is out cussing and crying over his car and growling at the truck unaware it has no driver. But that won’t stop him, nor will it stop the truck from moving to take out Loman, The truck backs up and smacks the running horny salesmen in the ass and off into a ditch.

I guess we can bid farewell to Camp and Duncan now. Well at least Duncan. Even Brett is getting emotional. So emotional in fact she needs to change out of her outfit, While Bill is outside the bathroom stall because. Why not.

The trucks have their own mission to carry out now. When a people is being mistreated and feeling misused, theres only one thing left in this world to do.

Picket, protest, and call the union.

So the trucks begin circling the gas station, and I mean every truck is circling the gas station. Hording up all the humans into the gas station diner.

Meanwhile our married couple is driving their car which has yet to turn evil on them, and they notice an entire line of trucks driving off the opposite direction. This doesn’t sit right with the trucks, seeing a non conformist car driving on its own. So a truck takes off after the couple to figure out just what the hells going on! Why is a car allowing itself to be driven by humans! Needless to say a chase begins and. Well it goes as well as you can imagine having a small car take on a big rig mack truck.

It's front end is wrecked, the back end is demolished, and the fact the car is still working is a miracle. But somehow they manage to survive. Because a car can do something a truck can’t. And that’s handle steep sudden turns. As they drive off making a turn down a hill side. The truck follows and ends up crashing. Exploding itself. A victory for the human race and a married couple. A crushing defeat for Mack truck and many truckers shed a tear.

Meanwhile the most realistic scene within the diner is unfolding. Everyone is drinking beer and eating as they notice the married couple driving toward the diner, attempting to break through the circle of trucks and into the safety of the diner. They almost manage to make it unscathed. Their car gets fishtailed by one of the trucks and sent into a tumble. But Bill and Brett are quick to race out and help save the couple, Pulling them free and running for the diner.

Now, for once, they aren’t alone. Mr. Hendershot is headed out of the diner as well, with his right hand man Joe(Pat Miller), and they are packing rocket launchers.

Yes. Rocket launchers. He’s as happy as a pig in shit and firing off one rocket after another. Taking out several trucks in the process. For once it seems the humans are winning! Though it does raise the logical question, if Hendershot has that stuff in his basement, what the hell else does he have.

Well apparently as we learn? Everything. He’s one of those old fashioned sleazy guys who knows how to make deals and friends, so he’s got himself a huge illegal armory in the basement of his gas station diner. Well now that paints a pretty picture of survival for these people. At least you’d imagine so. The moment you bring firearms into an 80’s film. You bring hope.

You know what else firearms bring aside hope? Ba-ba-ba-banging!

Apparently Bill and Brett have found romance. Who would’ve thought! After a chance meeting, instant flirting and escaping a rogue truck. These two are playing footsie in bed and touchin bodies together. In the most romantic bed you could ever need let alone imagine. The same bed Quinn was laid down on when doused in diesel fuel with the wall of hardcore pornography.

It’s every womans dream to make love in a dirty oil rag man sweat filled room ontop of a stinky old mattress used as a spank bunk with a tribute wall of spread leg busty ladies.

But we won’t judge them too badly, I guess. They’re making the best of a bad situation after all. I guess!

While the night sky glows green thanks to the tail of the earlier mentioned comet, everyone is getting drunk as hell with no signs of stopping. Now if you’ve searched through the many halls of youtube for memes and movie wtf scenes. You may have just found the source of one such meme that people do enjoy using. Wanda June, our sauced up and bandaged waitress is enjoying a few more drinks with her trucker friends and finally figures out how bullshit all this is. Those machines can’t hate us or kill us. We made them. How dare they! Her friends drunkenly attempt to calm her, but Wanda is not one you can calm down when she gets to poppin bottle tops at the bar. She’s stumbling outside to confront these trucks, and shouting her now epic and immortal words. “WE MADE YOU! You Pukey things! We made you!!”

Well those trucks don’t much appreciate that, nor does the electricity the building was supplying them. It’s never wise to provoke picket line protesters. So the trucks growl at honk at the humans, while the building shuts down their electricity. Reminding those humans just who’s in charge. Forcing everyone inside to rely on hurricane lamps for lighting. Truckers are busy drinking, Bill and Brett are playing cards, and our married couple is….in the corner of a booth fingering his wife.

I am not joking, I am not ‘imaginng’, he is most assuredly doing so under the table and under the cover of a jacket placed over them both and she is in a giggle fit blushing until a knee hits the table and they both stop for a moment. It…why?

Oh yes, cocaine.

Meanwhile the group begins noticing crying and moaning outside not associated with the married couple. The bible salesman is still alive, just very badly injured. So Bill is headed out to attempt a rescue, he’s not alone though, he’s getting help from newly married man Curtis. The man is feeling especially heroic after. Well yes. So the two are sneaking outside and attempting their rescue. They’ve found a possible way out for everyone as well if this works. There’s a sewer drain out back, and the drain leads out to the ditch where the salesman was tossed after the truck slammed into him. So if these two can make it there and save the man. It’s possible all of them can get out through this tunnel and away from the trucks! Well possibly. If they can stomach you know. The sewage.

Well as our two heroes crawl through raw sewage, we have another stealth mission going. Our ball player Deke has managed to make it alive to the truck stop. He’s crawling through mud and grass like he’s back in Vietnam. He manages to come across the body of our bible salesman Loman. Who gives us a very rare Stephen King scare in this movie. It appears the man is dead as the boy investigates. Until he goes to leave Loman, who then reaches out and grabs hold of the kids leg. Growling for the kid to help him. He pleads with the man asking how he can help him. He tells the kid to pull him, but he’s too heavy, so Loman, looking like an absolute nightmare of blood and mud growls out at the kid. “You pull me out, or by jesus I will kill you!”

Bill and Curt make it to the otherside and hear the young boy crying for help. They pull him free of Loman just as a truck begins to veer off into the ditch with them, running over Loman as they rush back into the sewage tunnel. Just before the truck crushes the tunnel and blocks it off. Sealing the group inside now. They make it back to the diner, but not before getting to blow up one more truck with a rocket. The trucks are not happy with this.

At all.

In fact, its time for the protesting trucks to bring in their union support. As we see coming toward the gas station a bulldozer, and the union spokesman, an army jeep with a mounted machine gun. This can only bode well for negotiations.

It’s also one of my favorite scenes in the movie, and one no one I worked with ever understood the reference of, they just took it as Donnie being Donnie. As the bulldozer pushes debris out of the way, making way for the machine gun jeep. Our drunk humans are waking up, One of whom is a man. A hero. Who slams two large doors open hard enough to shatter the glass, immediately waking up and scaring two men out of their sleep and announces still half drunk “What the hells going on in here!”

It still cracks me up, and working in a restaurant with two double doors to the kitchen was the perfect place to constantly act out that scene to my coworkers. They didn’t get it, but they enjoyed it. Their loss.

Speaking of their loss. The bulldozer is trying to get everyones attention. So it bulldozes Bubba(That’s Mr. Hendershot) his car right into the diner. Immediately upsetting the man to a point he needs to grab his rocket launcher and blow up the bulldozer. Celebrating his victory, until he spots the mounted machine gun. Which promptly answers back with immediately opening fire on the group. Killing Hendershot and a whole load of truckers we didn’t get to meet. The group is now made aware they have their own weapons to fight back. Wanda June can’t believe what they did and remembers her rant from last night. Heading outside she decides to take up her issues with the union. “WE MADE YOU! DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?!” Well they understand, but that’s not a fair argument. So she gets gunned down as well.

So, now that they have their attention. It’s time for negotiations. Leave it to the military jeep to use its horn to begin communicating to the humans in morse code. Which thankfully Deke can understand and translates for the group, what could the trucks possibly want from these humans?

Fuel!!

That’s right. They can live, if they refuel the trucks. And not just the trucks there, oh no. All trucks. Trucks driving across county lines and state to get gas from this little station. Which Bill is more than happy to do. Why? Because he fears if there is a talking army jeep out there, what’s to say it can’t talk to other military weapons and send napalm over them?

I mean it’s a fair point, and it’d be cool. Deadly but cool to see. So the group decides it’s better to fuel the devils needs versus risk glowing with radiation and burning alive.

So we begin fueling every truck while AC/DC plays out and we get a classic 80’s montage. Everyone is working to the point of exhaustion, feeding every truck, growing blisters on their hands and wreaking of fuel. Going to the point their pumps are bone dry.

Do the trucks care? HELL NO!!! They tell the humans to knuckle up butter cup, they got a fuel tanker and its refueling the pumps for them. Which is rather polite honestly. But it’s also well, you know. Their work is not done, the suffering is only beginning.

With no way out in sight. The group decides to pull a Thunderdome and say “Bust the deal, face the wheel!” Billy boy decides to walk calmly past the mounted machine gun, drops a grenade into its flatbed, spins the gun around and runs with his buddy back to the diner. Just in time for the grenade to go off, and with that, the trucks have lost their union rep.

It’s time for war! The trucks are destroying the station and the diner. But our group is one step ahead. They know the sewage tunnel was blocked off by the one truck. But there’s still another tunnel out there. The one Deke saw with a metal gate over its front. So with a pair of wire clippers, a pocket full of dreams and hope. Our group takes to the tunnels and cuts a road to freedom. With the plan now being, well. Bill had a plan, and it seems they’re all okay with it. He talked about the idea of heading to a ship dock, and taking off in a sailboat. No engines, no electronics to worry about. It’d be perfectly safe for them. So that’s the plan Stan.

It gives us a very holy hell pure Stephen King scene as well. The Goblin Truck is after our survivors and driving like a bat out of hell down the road after them. Passing by a school bus. With a private plane crashed directly ontop of it. Leave it to King to kill an entire bus of kids and show us.

As our group rushes toward freedom, one of our truckers stops along the way to the boat dock as he spots a dead rich woman with a ring either far more expensive than any big rig they’d ever driven, or something she bought from a Walmart for $2.

The trucker frees the ring from her finger, giving himself a nice little prize to cash in later, or give to a nice lady friend for some company. Only he doesn’t appear to notice the stealthy Goblin truck behind him. Which exists stealth mode and runs him over. The truck is calling out Billy boy and rushes toward him as fast as second gear will allow it too. Bill rushes out to meet the truck, only he’s packing a rocket launcher and fires off a round right into the open mouth of the goblin face. The truck blows up never even getting close enough to land a single blow or have a proper showdown. Meaning they likely ran out of money, which mysteriously vanished into cocaine piles for the director. AC/DC blast out over the speakers, our group makes it to their sailboat, and the screen fills with text giving us closure, prepare yourselves.

“Two days after a large UFO was destroyed in space by a Russian ‘weather satellite,’ which happened to be equipped with a laser cannon and class IV nuclear missiles. Approbimately six days later, the earth passed beyond the tail of Rhea-M, exactly as predicted. The survivors of the Dixie boy gas station, are still survivors”

And with that, as Angus Young plays us off with Shook Me All Night Long, the movie comes to its end.

The End!!

Holy hell. This movie is still a large scale mess of what the fuck am I watching, comedy, and horror that never really goes full horror like you’d expect, but the places it does go are just. Well as bright and colorful as the end credits themselves. Which if you stay for and should for the music alone, you get a huge ugly green screen with yellow bright text.

It was Kings one and only directorial credits, if you have to wonder why, you did not see the movie. Or you did and like me you wanted, needed more.

This will always get me as just so incredibly…A how in the hell did this get made and released? I really wish there were behind the scenes video shot, anything. SOME PROOF, of King directing this and giving us a look at his state while making it.

Because believe It or not. Please do though, believe this. The cut of the film we got? Is the edited down shortened version. There was an uncut longer. Much, much longer version. That was so graphic, gross and intense, the film would’ve earned an NC-17 rating, and George Romero, his best friend whom he made Creepshow with and taught him about filmmaking. He showed him the original cut of the film, and Romero had to stop it because he was about to throw up.

Romero had said this himself, that the film was so gruesome it really did nearly cause him to throw up. So King had to make a lot of cuts to the film to get it down to a commercially approved rating for wide theatrical release.

So if you can imagine this film, the craziness we saw and the hyper toned down violence. Being not only longer but 90% more horrific? WHILE being made by a man coked out of his mind. My god what a film.

But there is likely never going to be a day we will see that film released. Who knows where the cut footage is and if there even exist somewhere out there an uncut sealed film can for the movie.

All I know is we have a great film with the most amazing music, and cocaine comedy. It’s a gift to the world and bless King for making it. But now, lets talk about that soundtrack.

The Music.

AC/DC. It’s the main reason why anyone knows this film. It’s why most people enjoy this film, and its soundtrack is the entire album “Who Made Who”. It brought us many classics of the band we now know and love far more than the film itself, which is a little sad. But rightfully so.

I rented the movie because I saw the Goblin faced truck on the cover and thought oh man, this looks cool! A killer clown truck! Then my dad saw this, patted my back and said to prepare myself for a fun film with cool music. He was right. It wasn’t at all the movie I thought it’d be, but I laughed my ass off through the whole thing, I thought it was cool as hell, and the music was absolutely rocking throughout.

It left a deep impression on me because up until that point I hadn’t heard a film that’s entire soundtrack was hard rock music. It was new to me and it wouldn’t be until I watched Highlander many years later and heard Queen doing the soundtrack, that I’d have another film like it that I just loved the music from.

So yes I own Who Made Who and Maximum Overdrive, as well as Queens “It’s a Kind of Magic” album and Highlander. They’re all great pieces of music and fun films.

It was just another worldly experience for me hearing perfectly cued rock music being used for hilarious and horrific scenes.

But there wasn’t just AC/DC being played there. We also got some Roger Miller there too, when we see the Ice Cream truck appropriately named My-T Tas-T Ice Cream, we hear the song “King of the Road” being played from the truck, another classic and one I grew up enjoying, I learned from my dad.

When Deke is riding his bike across the highway and hears a plane over head. The same one that coincidentally ended up later crashing onto a bus full of children, was playing “Ride of the Valkyries”. Which was oddly appropriate and a nice nod to Apocalypse Now. In a fucked up Stephen King way.

Of course the music we get from AC/DC dominates as it rightfully should. I mean you have a LOT of heavy hits from this film. The film blessed us with:

Hell’s Bells

You Shook Me All Night Long

Who Made Who

Sink the Pink

And one of my favorite slow rocks, “Ride On”.

Though that being said, I mean.

I can’t exactly name favorites as every last one of those is just so damn. Well hell its AC/DC. I never would’ve imagined “Sink the Pink” would be an action song in a film, let alone “Who Made Who” being used for a montage of destruction and death. But here we are.

I don’t know how, or why the music just works so well as a soundtrack, or why King thought it’d be a good idea. Oh wait. Sorry. Cocaine.

Bless cocaine for this soundtrack.

And the band loved it as well as King. I mean they allowed their van in the movie, and they made a special appearance as well in the film. They’re proud of it and damn right they should’ve been. That’s a hell of a lot of classics to come out of one film. I’ve yet to meet someone who didn’t end up loving the soundtrack and accepting the movie as ‘an experience’ and my favorite “It’s…definitely something.”

The movie always puts me in a good mood and the music is key to that experience. It’s hard to beat a funny horror film with out there jokes, the weirdest basis of a story, throwing in UFO’s as well, blowing up trucks and all to the sound of AC/DC.

It just doesn’t get happier then that, and I love that this movie keeps getting better looking releases, and gives me the music I love. Please check it out, give it all a good listen, and I mean hell you’ve heard most the soundtrack already thanks to the radio and Marvel films. So why not go for broke and pick it up.

Until tomorrow, please try to resist surprise sex in hotel rooms, and demand that you do it in a dingy smelly oil and gas fumed room with hardcore pornography on the walls. Just giving life advice people.