Fellman's Movie Reviews

Red = Spoilers 

What’s it about? On June 19, 1987, as the earth crosses the tail of a rogue comet, Rhea-M, inanimate machines start coming alive. Signs start producing their own messages. ATM’s start insulting customers. A bridge rises in the middle of traffic, tossing dozens of people into the river below. Chaos ensues as the machines attack humans all over the world. At the Dixie Boy Truck Stop just outside Wilmington, North Carolina, the mechanic, Duncan Keller is blinded by a gas pump spraying diesel fuel in his eyes. After an electric knife attacks the waitress, and an arcade machine kills a customer, the fry cook and paroled convict Bill Robinson begins to suspect something is happening. Meanwhile, at a little league game, a vending machine kills the coach of the team while he’s getting sodas by firing cans directly at his face. A road roller with no driver on it flattens one of the kids on the team after he falls off of his bike, but Duncan’s son Deke manages to make it safely away from the game. A newlywed couple, Curtis and Connie, come across a corpse at a roadside gas station. But after calling attention to a tow truck, and then narrowly missing it as it tries to run him over, they escape with the truck following closely behind them. Deke rides through town on his bike as the townsfolk, and even a dog have been killed by machines. An ice cream truck drives by with its cheery music playing in a hauntingly seductive manner. Presumably to try and lure out more humans for the machines to kill. Back at the Dixie Boy, a garbage truck runs over Duncan when he insists on leaving to go look for Deke, despite the fact that he can’t see anything because he’s been blinded by having diesel fuel shot into his eyes. And a truck with a giant Green Goblin mask on its grille runs a bible salesman named Camp Loman down into a ditch. Soon after, several other 18-wheelers start circling the truck stop. Curtis and Connie lose the tow truck and almost hit another 18-wheeler. They eventually outmaneuver it and it crashes off the side of a road and explodes. They then find themselves at the truck stop where everyone else is. Only, they have to get past the circle of trucks to get inside. Curtis thinks he can shoot through the gap that occurs every once in a while, between the trucks, but Connie doesn’t want him to try it. Curtis does it anyway and the car is hit by one of the trucks, flipping the car over. Curtis gets out, but Connie is trapped in the car, strapped in by the seat belt. Bill and Brett, a girl hitchhiking down to Florida, run out to save them. The owner of the truck stop, Bubba Hendershot uses a rocket launcher to provide cover for them to run back into the diner as he blows up several of the trucks. Deke arrives at the Dixie Boy later that night and tries to get into the pipe leading over to the diner but is stopped by the mesh grate. Later that night, everybody hears Loman screaming and Bill and Curtis try to go and save him. Before they get there, Deke comes upon Loman and he wakes up, barely alive, telling Deke to save him or he’ll kill him. Bill and Curtis show up and save Deke before Loman actually dies for real, but then a truck shows up and all three of them are forced back into the pipe. The next morning a bulldozer and a platform truck with a machine gun mounted on top of it show up at the Dixie Boy. After the bulldozer destroys Hendershot’s car, Hendershot gets angry about it and declares war on the machines, firing one of the rockets at the bulldozer. The platform gun fires the machine gun back at the diner killing several of the survivors. The truck then sends a signal through morse code, which Deke deciphers, that “SOMEONE MUST PUMP FUEL. SOMEONE WILL NOT BE HARMED. THIS WILL BE DONE NOW OR YOU WILL ALL DIE.” Realizing the machines have enslaved them, Bill comes up with an idea to escape. He drops a grenade on the platform truck, blowing it up. And then takes the rest of the survivors out through a sewer hatch right before the trucks destroy the diner completely. They head to the marina where they plan to get on a boat and head to an island called Haven where there are no machines allowed. The Green Goblin truck and the ice cream truck both find them at the marina but are both blown up by the crew and they sail off. An epilogue explains that two days later, a UFO was destroyed by a Soviet spaceship disguised as a weather satellite, conveniently equipped with class IV nuclear missiles and a laser cannon. Because what weather research doesn’t need class IV nuclear missiles and a laser cannon, right? And six days later, Earth passes out of the comet’s tail, and the survivors are still alive, wrapping everything up in a nice little package… 

What’s good? It’s got Emelio Estevez in it. That’s gotta count for something, right? I mean, he was in The Mighty Ducks. Not to mention the soundtrack. It’s pretty much just an AC/DC album in the background. And nothing rocks harder than The Mighty Ducks and AC/DC… 

What’s bad? You can point your finger at a lot of stuff, but if you want to ask, “what’s bad?” You’re gonna be here all day because there’s a lot of low-quality stuff going on in this movie. From the writing to the acting, to the special effects, to the editing. And I didn’t see it, because I was only two at the time, but I’m willing to bet the promotion for the movie wasn’t great either. 

The acting? Nobody really had a standout performance in this movie. But at the same time, nobody really stunk up the joint, either. It really was like most other 80s movies. Just kind of a “meh” experience. 

The effects? Generic 80s practical effects. Explosions, squibs, blood packets. Things you would see in any other sort of mediocre attempt at horror. 

The only Stephen King directed film. Well, we know why Stephen King is a writer, and not a director. He obviously picked the right form of media to go into because the movie business is not his forte at all.  

Just a quick back story in the beginning. It just gives a real quick paragraph explaining what’s happening before it jumps into the movie. Not like you could write scenes SHOWING what was happening or anything. Not like that was what they did in the movie industry… 

The people who landed in the water when the bridge went up should be thankful. Seriously, the people who fell off the bridge and down into the water should be thanking their lucky stars because the people who were up on the bridge were getting crushed by watermelons and flung through windshields. The people who got dropped down into the water should be swimming away thinking “whew…”  

What was the guy in the orange truck trying to accomplish? What was the guy in the orange truck trying to accomplish, anyway? He was hitting the gas so hard that his wheels fell off? How fast can a truck like that go? It’s not doing him any good anyhow. It doesn’t have any wheels. 

Why did so many people stay in their cars for so long? Those people should’ve been getting out and getting off of that bridge a long time ago. Why did they wait so long before they started running? They waited until the bridge was practically vertical before they all started getting off the bridge.  

Free cigarettes. You can’t blame that guy for stopping to pick up all those packs of cigarettes. When a cigarette machine starts spitting up cartons of free smokes, it’s alright to pick them up. Those things are expensive.  

Shouldn’t have pointed the gas nozzle at his face. I know it was blocked and everything, but still, there had to be a better way to figure out what was wrong with it than sticking the nozzle right up to your eye like that. 

Hendershot didn’t care he got diesel in his eyes. The owner couldn’t care less that Duncan got Diesel in his eye. He was just trying to blackmail Bill to work for free. 

Half the employees are on probation. Hendershot purposefully hires people who are on probation so he can blackmail them into working hours for free or he’ll send them back to prison.  

The guy put his face right in front of the dispenser. The baseball coach put his face right in front of the soda dispenser and it hit him right in the forehead. Soda cans are heavy too. And solid. It would hurt getting hit in the face with a soda can.  

What did the kid flip over? The kid on the bike who gets run over by the street roller, what did he flip over in the first place? It looked like he just kind of stopped for no reason and flung forward. He was in the middle of a field. There was nothing there. His tire hits nothing and he lunged forward. And then he got run over. Sucks to be that kid. 

Loman is awfully forward with that girl. Loman has his hands all over that girl. And for what? Because he gave her a ride? Doesn’t seem like it was worth it when you really look at it.  

Why did she even pull that bible salesman out of the way? After he had his hands all over her and everything and he was yelling at her, why did she even pull him out of the way of the truck? She could’ve just let him get hit by one of them and be done with it.  

The newlywed wife is Lisa from the Simpsons. The young lady who just got married is Yeardly Smith, the voice of eight-year-old Lisa Simpson from The Simpsons, the 35-year running animated series on the Fox network. It’s good to put a face to a voice.  

Calling for the tow truck with the dead body. I don’t know why he’s calling for so much attention when there’s a dead body lying right there. That can’t look good on his part. If anything, you’d think he would want to be drawing LESS attention from him and the dead body lying less than 10 feet away from him, behind the bushes, that he has no explanation for… 

What was he waiting for to get in the car? Why was he taking so long to get in the car? A driverless tow truck literally just tried to run you over. What is there to think about? It’s time to leave.  

She probably had her foot pressed to the floor. She probably had her foot pressed down to the floor. The tires were spinning. The car was going in circles. They should’ve just gotten out and switched places.  

Did the guy on the front porch get killed by a Walkman? Did the guy on the front porch get killed by a Walkman? How do you get killed by a Walkman? 

Even if Deke rode normally, the lawnmower probably couldn’t catch him. Deke could casually ride his bike and that lawnmower still couldn’t catch him. He could taunt it if he wanted to. He could ride backward on his bike and stick his tongue out at it. Lawnmowers can’t go fast enough to catch bikes. They’re not physically able to.  

Why did the truck explode after it fell down the hill? Why did that truck explode after it fell down the hill? It seemed like almost an afterthought. “You know what? We should probably make the truck explode, too…” “Oh, yeah, that’s a good idea…” 

Yeardly Smith is annoying as hell. Yeardly Smith’s voice is annoying as hell. I never realized how annoying Lisa Simpson was until I heard her screeching at the top of her lungs for an entire movie.  

Where did he get that rocket launcher? Where did he get that rocket launcher, anyway? Where do you buy rocket launchers? They don’t exactly sell those at the corner store.  

Is that plane playing “Flight of the Valkyries” as intimidation? Is that plane flying around, blasting “Flight of the Valkyries” out of a speaker as some sort of intimidation tactic? Because if it is, that is some next level intimidation tactics coming from a robot. Think about it: If robots just have their own intimidation squads, flying around, playing “Flight of the Valkyries”. That’s actually pretty hardcore… 

The kid has good survival instincts. You gotta give it to the kid, he knows when to hide and he knows when to move. He knows when something’s coming and he knows what he should be watching out for.  

Great time to have sex. Bill and Brett picked a great time to have sex. Right in the middle of this horrifying apocalyptic situation, where trucks are driving themselves, and machines are attacking people. I mean, seriously, what other time would there be? I’d probably want to have sex too, honestly.  

I wouldn’t go get Loman. I wouldn’t go out to rescue Loman. That guy was a douchebag. You only have to listen to him cry until he dies. Then he’ll stop crying.  

They’re crawling around in human waste and it’s the rat Curtis is worried about. Curtis freaks out about the rat that runs past him as he’s crawling around in human shit. Like the rat is the biggest of his problems. 

The kid is going to find out his dad is dead sooner or later. Bill is trying to keep from telling Deke that his dad got killed by the trucks a little while ago whereas Hendershot tells him flat out and says, “tough break, kid”. The kid was gonna find out sooner or later, anyway. But he didn’t have to be such a dick about it. 

Where did the guy in the green shirt come from? Who is the guy in the green shirt, and where did he come from? Some guy in a green shirt just shows up and he looks drunk. And then he gets shot like five minutes later. So, he wasn’t exactly an important character.  

How many rocket launchers does he have? How many rocket launchers does Hendershot have? That’s like his answer to everything. “I’ll show them… Get me a rocket launcher…” 

Why are they all getting back up? Why are they even getting back up after the machine gun gets done killing all those people. It could easily start firing at any time. You would think you would want to stay below that firing line from now on, knowing that there’s a machine gun there. 

I don’t know why she thinks yelling at them will do anything. That waitress seems to think that they’re going to have some sort of ethical complication if she goes out and yells at them. Well, it didn’t work, and they shot her… 

Why did the trucks wait until night to start breaking everything? Why did the trucks wait so long before they started breaking things? Why didn’t they just start breaking things after they ran out of fuel? Were they taking a break or something? 

The guy stopped to loot that corpse. The guy stops to loot the corpse of that diamond ring and then ends up getting hit by the truck with the Green Goblin on the front. But it’s kind of his fault, because he was looting corpses.  

The Russians blew up a UFO and saved the world two days later. Two days later, a Soviet spaceship, disguised as a weather satellite, and conveniently equipped with class IV nuclear missiles and a laser cannon blew up a UFO. And then, the Earth passed out of the comet’s tail, leaving everything wrapped up all nice and neat. 

So, yeah. I would say go and see Maximum Overdrive. If for nothing else, just for the options that it gives you to make fun of it. And after that, just to say you’ve seen it. And as always, keep on watching, with a smile on your face…