Stephen King is regarded as one of the most influential names in horror, but his directorial debut, Maximum Overdrive, marked King’s hubris getting out of control, resulting in one of the most bizarre movie trailers of all time.
Stephen King’s reputation as a horror author is virtually unparalleled and many of his works have been adapted into horror films, all of which have seen various degrees of success and failure. 1986 marked a period where King was getting frustrated with lackluster adaptations of his novels and so he used his clout in the horror genre to write and direct his own movie, Maximum Overdrive. The film signifies an important turning point for the horror author as his reputation turned into the movie’s primary marketing tool, rather than the actual merits of the movie.
Maximum Overdrive tells the story of how inanimate machines—most notably trucks—gain a sentience after Earth enters the orbit of a mysterious comet. King is no stranger to unpacking the danger of vehicles, whether through supernatural means or otherwise, with Christine, From A Buick 8, Mr. Mercedes, and Riding the Bullet all exploring the idea in different contexts. What makes Maximum Overdrive such a puzzling experiment is that rather than focusing on the film’s scares or the strength of his story, King instead turns himself into the main attraction. Stephen King cameos in the movie, which is not an anomaly for the author, but what is unusual is how he’s the star of the movie’s trailer.
The approach that King takes with the Maximum Overdrive trailer is that he’s front and center as he directly addresses the audience. He criticizes the previous adaptations of his work and concludes by the announcement that, “if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.” He also ominously shouts that he’s “going to scare the hell out of you,” which comes across as more of an unhinged threat than an endorsement of the film. This strategy is not only incredibly silly, but it set up unreasonable expectations for the film that couldn’t possibly be met. What makes King’s speech even sillier is that, although there were some middling adaptations of his work, more importantly there was also Carrie, The Shining, and John Carpenter’s Christine, all of which are still generally looked at as some of the best Stephen King movies.
Maximum Overdrive was a colossal failure, both critically and commercially, which makes King’s speech even more egregious in retrospect. A standard trailer wouldn’t have set such high expectations and made King himself such a target. Stephen King can’t even hold back these impulses when it comes to the other promotional materials for the movie. Maximum Overdrive’s poster brazenly features King tearing through the picture and acting as the puppet master behind everything. He’s the most dominant image on the poster. Even the tagline on the poster has nothing to do with the plot of the movie and is instead another monument of hubris as it advertises, “Stephen King’s masterpiece of terror directed by the master himself.” While not as egregious, this level of unchecked seniority is also present with the film’s iconic soundtrack by AC/DC, which had more to do with the group being King’s favorite band at the time than them being the perfect fit for the story.
Stephen King’s arrogant approach with the film’s trailer becomes all the more ironic since he’s later cited the movie as the reason for why he likely won’t direct another film, going so far as to refer to Maximum Overdrive as a “moron movie.” This is not to say that a horror trailer that features Stephen King is a broken idea, but this wasn’t the project to do it. One of his novels that’s actually about writing, like Misery, could maybe pull it off, but it should still showcase the story, not the creator. In Maximum Overdrive, Stephen King forgets the face of his father and gets too caught up in the celebrity of cinema.
