Stephen King's sole directorial effort MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE (1986) apparently wasn't silly enough (or didn't bomb hard enough) to kill the will of producers to remake his short story "Trucks" just over a decade later. In this incarnation, folks are held captive by the title beasts in a rustic truck stop run by Ray (Timothy Busfield). This was made-for- TV with a low budget and is decidedly less goofy so one has to wonder, "Why bother?" I mean, outside of the obvious, "We'll put Kings name on it and make a ton of money." The cast of mostly Canadians is fine and the illogical scenes are abound (if machines are turning on you, why is your plan to ride a motorcycle to steal a helicopter from the Army base? ). The funniest bit is a truck using its mirrors to spy on someone and then trying to play it off when someone catches it. And since when do cars with unexplained sentient powers need to see from the driver's viewpoint? There are a few gory and unrelated kill scenes that look like they were added in post-production, seemingly confirmed by an "additional scenes" end credit. Interestingly, they were produced by William (SCARECROWS) Wesley.
