BA_Harrison In 1986, Stephen King turned director, adapting his short story 'Trucks' for the cinema; the result was Maximum Overdrive, a hokey horror with lots of silly deaths, an excess of vehicular destruction, a rockin' soundtrack, and a truck that looked like The Green Goblin! The film received negative reviews and was a box-office flop, although I actually found it to be a whole lot of fun.Trucks is another attempt at bringing King's short story to the screen, this time by director Chris Thomson, and it too is extremely dumb, even more-so at times, with a couple of unbelievably silly killings (try not to laugh at the sight of an inflated unoccupied hazmat suit wielding an axe, or the killer toy truck!); as such, I also found it entertaining.Sadly, there's no AC/DC blaring over the action, and the film suffers slightly from a noticeable lack of a big green-faced semi-trailer, but it's still worth checking out - especially for the surprisingly good ending.

Eightiesjunkie Let me start off by saying this: I love Stephen King! He's one of my all-time favorite writers, and no one else can match his imagination. Now, many of his novels and short stories have been turned into films. Some are great, some are so-so, some are bad, and some are horrifically bad. Unfortunately, this film falls into the latter category. Both this film, and 1986's "Maximum Overdrive" were based on a short story that King had published. Many, many people have claimed that "Maximum Overdrive" is the all-time worst Stephen King adaptation ever made. In my personal opinion however, that's really unfair. Because trust me, you can do a WHOLE lot worse than "Maximum Overdrive". I've seen many Stephen King movies over the years, and I must say: this movie is beyond a shadow of a doubt, the worst one I've ever seen in my life! Worse than "It", worse than "The Tommyknockers", worse than "Sleepwalkers", worse than "Golden years", worse than "Thinner", worse than all those movies combined! If you think that "Maximum Overdrive" is King's worst, then you clearly haven't seen any of the movies I mentioned previously, or this movie. comparing "Maximum Overdrive" to this film, is like comparing a Calzone to a Totino's pizza roll! The reason why "Trucks" fails where "Maximum Overdrive" succeeds, is because "Max" doesn't take itself seriously. The concept is ridiculous, so it just has has fun with it. which is basically what the movie is, a "turn your brain off" fun movie. "Trucks" is about as "fun" as watching paint dry! "Trucks" also plays the concept totally straight. I suppose they were trying to make it scary, but it's not, it's just stupid! Not to mention the fact, that the film lacks everything that made "Max" good. No good actors, no intriguing characters, no awesome soundtrack, and no big bad killer truck! I can only guess what the filmmakers were trying to accomplish with this movie. Maybe they thought "Maximum Overdrive" was a mistake, and were trying to make up for it, but you can't make up for a "mistake", by making a bigger, far worse, one!

TheBlueHairedLawyer Really, the plot is very similar to King's earlier film, Maximum Overdrive. Trucks suddenly start coming to life, driving themselves and pursuing people with lethal intent. A group of travelers and locals are imprisoned inside the truckstop diner. There they plot various means of escape from the prowling trucks outside. It is theorized that the trucks could have been activated by debris from a passing comet, a toxic pollution spill or military experiments at the nearby Area 51.A toxic pollution spill, seriously? You know, you can slap the name Stephen King on any movie, good or bad, and people will watch it if they're a fan. Granted his short story was much better, but I've seen a ton of trash Stephen King movies like Firestarter 2: Rekindled and I've also seen some films of his that were excellent, like Pet Sematary. It makes no difference who wrote the books, if the movie was badly made than the author has nothing to do with it.Trucks is very boring in the beginning, and though I love Canada, Manitoba isn't the type of place to film a movie. Dolores Claiborne, filmed in the beautiful province of Nova Scotia, has much better scenery material. The soundtrack was dull and the acting was generally very bad... but on the bright side, Amy Stewert, who had the role of Amanda Benson in the spectacular TV movie Welcome to Dead House that same year, played the minor role of Abby very well in Trucks.I was about to rate it two stars but I thought that to be a little unfair, so I give it 4/10.

superman1 It's not a remake of Maximum Overdrive, it's an unmake - what that film should have been. Trucks is based pretty closely on the short story, which is one of King's best in his Nightshift collection. The action is constant. It never lets up. And for a TV movie, there seems a lot of explosions, or budget in other words. Apart from The Car (1977), or Killdozer (1974), it's a unique movie - well, trinique - being the only films of vehicular possession that I recall. Woops I forgot Christine (1983). Quadnique.A few times it snaps reality, when, I think, adding ideas King maybe didn't. It was a relief and pleasure seeing the ideas King developed faithfully appear as the movie progressed, making me remember the story I read ages ago. The acting, especially at-times-terror-stricken Timothy Busfield, and character, is de-fine.And about the people who can't believe it, or the intriguing and various hard trying attempts at explanation, which added more fun, depth, and reality to the black magic of the story, I think of what Stephen King said when he heard of people who can't believe in these stories:I feel a kind of sadness.Now if they just unmake The Mangler in the same way, which was the best story in that book...