Maximum Overdrive

Episode 103: Maximum Overdrive (1986)

Theme: Stephen King Month
Hosts: Oz & Curtis

This week, Oz and Curtis buckle in for Maximum Overdrive — the only movie written AND directed by Stephen King during the exact 72-hour window where his bloodstream was 90% cocaine and 10% ACDC. It's Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines × Young Guns × a whole lotta “We got a great big convoy rockin’ through the night!”

Your two favorite non-certified truck stop mechanics dig into:

• The Movie Marriage: Terminator 3 × Young Guns × a novelty-trucker greatest-hits cassette.

• Stephen King’s Cameo: The ATM calls him an a-hole, which is objectively the most autobiographical thing in this entire movie.

• The Drawbridge Disaster: Windshields shatter, cars launch like roller coasters, and Wilmington, NC loses its entire annual watermelon crop in 15 seconds.

• The Green Goblin Truck: Sentient, murderous, Marvel-adjacent, and somehow not the strangest-looking vehicle in the film.

• Curtis & Connie: Newlyweds, sweaty, terrified, and constantly screaming each other’s names like a Southern soap opera reboot of Speed.

• Deke the Baseball Boy: The only character with survival instincts, bike agility, and the sudden ability to read Morse code because yes, the trucks start honking in Morse code.

• Bubba Hendershot: Southern-fried villain, weapons hoarder, and the guy who would absolutely yell “THE SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN” at a malfunctioning microwave.

• Wanda June: Delivers the iconic “WE MADE YOU!” before being obliterated by every squib in North America.

• The Gas-Pumping Montage: ACDC blares while everyone sweats profusely and pumps fuel for what feels like 19 hours.

• The Comet Explanation: Aliens sent the comet to “clean house,” which is the kind of sci-fi logic only cocaine and North Carolina humidity can produce.

It’s loud, chaotic, dumb in a lovable way, and fueled entirely by diesel fumes and the power chords of Angus Young. A true relic of King’s “I absolutely do not remember making this” era.

Final Verdict:

Oz — 18 Wheelers
Curtis — 37 Curtis Are You Deads

Next week: Pet Sematary — back to Maine, back to the dead, back to Jud Crandall explaining that “sometimes… dead is bettah.” Prepare your spines and your Achilles tendons.