EPISODE 119 - Maximum Overdrive: LIVE!

[Ribelin2000 23]

This one's for "Corrections and Omissions":

 

Early in the film, when we first meet the Bible salesman and the "road twitch", they're in the car, the twitch is listening to the guy on the radio talk about the reports of machines coming to life and attacking people, the salesman is babbling about his life, so the twitch tells him to be quiet, and the salesman replies, "What's wrong, n!gger sweet-thing?!"

 

That's right, the Bible salesman actually calls a white woman the n-word. WTF?

 

Also, the very first shot of the movie is of the planet Earth, but if you look carefully, you'll notice the image is upside-down.

[DanEngler 5249]

That's right, the Bible salesman actually calls a white woman the n-word. WTF?

Jesus Christ. No, he says "What's wrong there, sweet thing?" with a chuckle.

[FisterRoboto 7499]

Look, guys--this movie is fucking deep. You just have to open your minds a little and let it permeate your grey matter. Let it in. It all makes sense. All of it!

It sounds like the movie's going to date rape me.

[Henry 3777]

Jesus Christ. No, he says "What's wrong there, sweet thing?" with a chuckle.

 

The really subtly disturbing detail of that scene is that when she picks up his hand and throws it back into his lap it makes a clear skin-on-skin clap sound. Is that guy picking up girls while driving around without pants on?

[Molly L. 99]

 

The really subtly disturbing detail of that scene is that when she picks up his hand and throws it back into his lap it makes a clear skin-on-skin clap sound. Is that guy picking up girls while driving around without pants on?

 

Oh god, I didn't even notice that but I just rewatched the scene and it does sound off...he was The Worst. The most ridiculous part of the exchange is when she pulls at the wheel to get him off the road and they skid into the parking lot, then he asks, "Are you on something?" when he was just drinking out of a flask while driving. That's some nerve, Bible Salesman.

 

I also want to talk about a particular line of Bubba's; when he calls for Emilio and Emilio says he's cooking eggs, Bubba responds, "I don't give a ladybug!" Is this a phrase people say outside this movie?

[Cam Bert 8145]

Wow, time zones are killing me again. Too late to jump into things or comment on everything I read.

 

Anyway, to make up for this I've decided to bring my own little segment to the comments page. I live in Japan and as a result some of these movies when I have to track down in video stores or iTunes go by different names. Some movies like "Nightmare on Elm Street" get their title simply directly translated into Japanese, other movies retain their name but put into Japanese phonetically like "Pet Cemetery". There is no seemingly rhyme nor reason to this. However, every so often they decide to just change the title completely like the Fast and Furious movies being known as Wild Speed. When this is the case I decided to bring it you guys and maybe you'll get a chuckle out of it. So without further ado I bring you...

 

How Did This Get Named?

 

In Japan Maximum Overdrive is called... Hell's Devil Trucks. It could also be Hell's Devil Truck as there are no plurals in Japanese and you could easily assume they are just talking about the Green Goblin truck.

Bonus Fact: The TV movie Trucks based of the short story is called Trucks. They didn't touch that one at all.

[jarrycanada 2483]

Who remembers MonsterVision with Joe Bob Briggs on TNT? It was definitely the best interstitial movie show of the 90s. Well, here's all the stuff from the Maximum Overdrive show. Check it out.

 

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I forgot about TNT, we had that channel here in Canada as part of our cable line up and I loved it, yet hated it. It was famous for showing movies edited down to a two hour time frame. so you would see a movie like maximum overdrive with tv ads in a two hour window. regardless if it was 90mins or not. I would say they are the K-tel records of television in that, in order to get a movie into a two hour time frame all they did was cut out all of the none action moments of a movie so you didn't really notice it until later when you watched in on dvd. so if this movie was say Midnight Cowboy, Jon Voight would be taking a lot of very short walks and his tricks or jobs would be very short. we don't get TNT anymore thanks to the CRTC and cable license screw ups. But some how miss it.

[RyanSz 3140]

CORRECTION:

As stated earlier the group's plan was to get to a sailboat since it would have no engine, thus not under the influence of diaRhea-M.

 

As for the other machines, I think the logic was if it had an engine or was powered electrically, then it could be controlled. I was surprised that no one on the panel mentioned that Giancarlo Esposito was the guy in the arcade after the spoiler for Breaking Bad, especially after they showed his scene in the film. I was also surprised that no one mentioned that a legit teenager walks in on Emilio and the hitchhiker after they just got done fucking and sits down to talk to them a la Denny from The Room, made even weirder by all of the porno pictures on the wall. I would ask if anyone went up to Stephen King and mentioned that it might be kinda illegal to have a minor around full frontal porno, but then again, cocaine. And since this movie came out three years before The Simpsons premiered, can was credit Stephen King for creating "eat my shorts?"

 

Also I finally figured out the answer to life, the universe, and everything is not 42 but cocaine.

 

p.s. can we get a full rendition of "You're the Best Around" sung by Jason?

[RyanSz 3140]

Who remembers MonsterVision with Joe Bob Briggs on TNT? It was definitely the best interstitial movie show of the 90s. Well, here's all the stuff from the Maximum Overdrive show. Check it out.

 

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This might be the greatest episode of Monstervision ever because it is one of the greatest pieces of evidence of Joe Bob getting completely sloshed during each episode, there was another one where he would go on a rant about his buddy and a girl he was dating and other random shit.

[Cam Bert 8145]

I think I'm safe in talking about this, because I don't think I saw it mentioned in previous comments but I want to talk about two weird things in the journey of Lisa Simpson and Haley Joel Osment.

 

First, as they are driving along the road they pass some dead car up on blocks in a yard. Those cars begin to flash their head lights in a morse code like fashion. Foreshadowing? Then they cross some train tracks and the warning light seem to be using some sort of morse code single too. When they finally get to the gas station Haley Joel is attacked by a tow truck. Was this the machines saying "Hey humans coming, pass it on" so the tow truck would be ready to kill them?

 

Second, at the first gas station they pull into there is a sign saying the Dixie Boy is 3 miles away. They start driving in that direction. Awhile later we see them driving down a straight of highway where all the trucks seem to be driving away from the Dixie Boy (only to turn around and come back for gas later) and get chased by a killer truck. At the end of the chase they are stopped in front of a sign now saying the Dixie Boy is 2 miles away. That must be the world's longest mile.

[Auden 1809]

Paul: So everything went back to normal after 6 days?

 

No. In the book, things don't go back to normal. If anything, things seem to get worse. The sentence "The survivors of the Dixie Boy are still survivors," is structurally similar to a phrase in the famous passage that opens and closes Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, "and whatever walked there, walked alone." Like everyone, Stephen King thought the passage was brilliant. He even quoted "and whatever walked there, walked alone," in Salem's Lot. The phrase suggests that Hill House is still haunted. By alluding to The Hauting of Hill House, King is saying that whatever happened in the world of Maximum Overdrive is still happening (hence the survivors still need to survive).

 

I'm guessing that the Russian weather satellite line was put in because the studio did not want a bummer ending and the line cast enough ambiguity on "The survivors of the Dixie Boy are still survivors" for people to be able to say that machines stopped killing people and pets.

 

Anyway, to make up for this I've decided to bring my own little segment to the comments page. I live in Japan and as a result some of these movies when I have to track down in video stores or iTunes go by different names.

That's interesting that Japan still has video stores.

 

You're HDGTM's Japan correspondent.

[Joven 373]

Did anyone find these things annoying regarding the deaths of Bubba and a random trucker?

 

1. We can all agree that besides the machines, the real villain in the movie is Bubba. Once we met him, we all knew he was gonna die at the end of the film. So when the time came and the machine gun truck blew him away... we don't get to see it happen! Tight shot of gun going off. Cut to Bubba riddled with bullets. So did the actor revolt against squibs going off on him? I mean they had the technology on set for there were two other patrons blown apart.

 

2. The last death is also so strange. The survivors are running towards the boat, but one random trucker veers off and decides now is a good time to steal a dead woman's wedding ring. So as a viewer, I am seeing him as an asshole and have no issue with him dying. So of course the goblin truck kills him which then leads to our "hero" blowing up the truck. If we are suppose to be very excited that the goblin truck is dead, why not have it kill a character we've grown to like. Namely "road twitch" or the newly married husband who has shown some heroism in the film.

 

Ugh! I hate this movie! This should have been shown at any D.A.R.E. meetings to convince kids that drugs will make you create shitty movies.

 

- Pete "The S Man" Scudese

 

So for Bubba's death, it kinda looked like it was meant to be as a slowed realization of the bullets kinda thing that movies like to do. (you get shot, you seem kinda fine, slump a little and look at a blood stain getting bigger, and then die.) Of course, it doesnt make much sense since theres a...thing...with a machine gun that just fired, so it was pretty obvious he would have fully realized it the instant it happened.

 

Couple other things about that moment. So, the first quick volley of the machine gun fires and kills Bubba, cut to a scene of the main characters diving for cover...and then the random superfluous truckers are all still just standing around waiting to be hit with bullets, which happens shortly thereafter.

 

Also, what the fuck is that thing? That car/buggy/weaponized Gator? Its not a Jeep with a mounted machine gun, its like a platform on wheels that just has a gun sticking out of it...it doesnt have anywhere for someone to sit but it has a steering wheel just jutting out in the front. Is that a real thing? What the fuck is that thing? Is it real? Whats it for? And does it actually exist?

 

---

For 2., I would also like to point out that dumb trucker who steals the ring thought that it was so valuable and awesome to have that he drops his giant fucking gun and backpack full of supplies and just leaves them. When he runs up to the car he sets them down, when hes called back to the group he just walks away from them. If he had lived, he would have been the first to be eaten, or at least the first to go on any suicide-run supply raids. "Hey dumb dumb, just remember to actually bring back the food you steal from that refrigerated truck you need to hunt down this time and dont get distracted by any shiny rocks." "Yeah, sucks you have to go up against a murderous 18-wheeler with only a pointy stick, if only you had a sniper rifle you could have used instead, oh well."

[Cam Bert 8145]

That's interesting that Japan still has video stores.

They are dying though. Every time I go in the sections are getting smaller and smaller. Netflix has just come here, and they have had a similar mail away DVD service for a couple years now. I figure it's only a matter of time.

[Joven 373]

Theres something bothering me about the whole Morse code thing.

 

Why did they pick Morse code?

 

We already saw that the aliens/comet dust could communicate in English (they called King an asshole and they actually spoke through the drive-thru speaker), so why didnt they just use a voice through a radio or something. Why send such an important message using a code very few people know?

 

10-4 good buddy, but lets be fair, how were they going to do that? Its not like large semi's would have some kind of radio broadcasting device installed in them which could facilitate communication...So just inventing that out of whole cloth wouldn't be believable. Over.

[Joven 373]

Nitpicky correction: "Christine" isn't about a killer truck. It's a killer car, guys. Totally different. Basically racist. How dare you.

 

So a thought that occurred to me while watching this movie is...are these animated machines racist?

 

The trucks seem to spread the word to other trucks of availability of fuel and people to provide it, they never attacked each other, waited patiently for their turns, etc. But fuck if they didnt care about murdering the hell out of any other machine. Phone booth? Not a truck, don't care, ram that bitch. Cars? They're not trucks, eww, they're like pygmy trucks, run them down who cares.

 

That plane kamikaze'd that school bus, the Cat fucked up that car a lot and pushed the other into the building. About the only cooperation from them was the Cat helping the trucks, and that weird ass not-jeep-gun-whateverthefuck thing with the gun, which I'm sure the trucks thought were "one of the good ones."

[NathanielParker 43]

Who remembers MonsterVision with Joe Bob Briggs on TNT? It was definitely the best interstitial movie show of the 90s. Well, here's all the stuff from the Maximum Overdrive show. Check it out.

 

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Marla Maples as the screaming woman in the opening. That's got to be the oddest role of someone that was modestly well known later I've ever seen.

 

I forgot about Joe Bob being on TNT but I used to love watching his show when he was on The Movie Channel.

[Joven 373]

My biggest concern with the rocket launcher was with the scene in which it was introduced. Bubba, the manager guy (or whatever he was) fires it a truck that is directly behind 4 people who are running straight at him, causing them to have to dive into the dirt face first. Did he not notice that four people were running and screaming towards him in his line of fire? Maybe it's just me, but whenever I fire a rocket launcher I make sure that the stars of the movie are nowhere near in front of me.

 

Its also incredibly easy to fire those, all that shoulder mounting stuff on the bottom and aiming reticle malarky on the top are just for show to make it look that much more badass when you fire it from the hip like you're Tony Montana.

 

Also, it was 100% unloaded when the waitress grabbed it to do her encore performance of "WE MADE YOU!", (Bubba had just fired it at the Cat and got murdled by the machine gun hoopty immediately after and then she grabbed it) Yet when she died it fired off another rocket into the air like it was a signal flare.

[Joven 373]

Also, not quite an entry for How Did This Get Made all stars, but the Zeke's Garbage Removal truck in Maximum Overdrive which runs over the kid's dad was an Autocar A64 B...which helped reunite a kid with his dad in Over The Top. (not sure if its the exact same truck, though.)

[AaronAMiller 0]

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but there was actually a second adaptation of King's story, a 1997 made for tv movie called Trucks.

 

https://en.wikipedia...ucks_%28film%29

 

Trailer:

 

 

Edit: Yep, someone did mention it earlier.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

 

They are dying though. Every time I go in the sections are getting smaller and smaller. Netflix has just come here, and they have had a similar mail away DVD service for a couple years now. I figure it's only a matter of time.

From what I understand though, Japanese Netflix has some slight differences from the U.S. version. For example, you've got your usual categories, like "Recently Watched", Drama", and "Romance", but then it also has twenty-seven categories devoted to tentacle porn, and that's in addition to the standards, like "Top Tentacle Porn Picks For You", "Watch This Tentacle Porn Again", "Tentacle Porn Documentaries", and "Children & Family Tentacle Porn".

[JMarkMorrison 2]

Connie / Curtis (married couple), Billy / Brett (hero / heroin), Duncan / Deke (father / son). Also, when this movie was released in '86 were we to think this was going to happen mid '87? It was written as something historical, but when it came out it hadn't happened yet...oh right, cocaine.

[Cockney Mackem 514]

I don't know if this is a correction or an omission because I'm not listening to the podcast until I finish Breaking Bad this weekend. However, the coast and their escape route is half a mile away, and the machine gun vehicle lets them know they're out of fuel. The trucks have one gun and the truck stop has an arsenal. And the machine gun is only dangerous if you don't duck. Why the bloody fuck do they waste time refuelling all the homicidal trucks when they coin wait until they all run out of gas and stroll to the marina?

[Cameron H. 23786]

So I pulled this up on youtube again after listening to the episode, and noticed that within 5 minutes a woman is thrown through a windshield of a car that is travelling at a very non-lethal speed, and we immediately move on. Then moments later that guy who falls off his motorcycle has a very dramatic slow motion shot of him sliding off the bridge and falling into water... That guy is fine, he fell into water from a safe height. That woman, even though she obviously threw herself into that windshield intentionally, most likely isn't. I guess my point is, can someone make a gif of that woman flying through the windshield?

 

 

You got it!

 

 

(Sorry, I just couldn't watch that anymore. If you want to see the gif, please follow this link.)

[Cameron H. 23786]

Kind of wishing I hadn't made that above gif now...Watching it on repeat is a reeeeeeeal bummer.

 

Hopefully, this makes up for it.

 

[NathanielParker 43]

Just to tie things into Monkey Shines a little, like the brick falling and shattering to represent his body, I'm sure the watermelons were supposed to be stand-ins for people flying all over and getting gooshed.

 

The watermelons are NOT machines killing people.