David Lynch’s masterpiece “Wild At Heart”), there are no shortage of easy ways to check out “Maximum Overdrive.”
Why is “Maximum Overdrive” so easy to watch? Well, it’s mainly because the movie’s … not very good.
TV & Beyond on 2025-10-10 18:00:00
Maximum Overdrive was so bad that King disowned it
StudioCanal
“Maximum Overdrive” has a Rotten Tomatoes score of only 14% and an IMDb rating of 5.4/10. That latter score isn’t actually that bad, especially considering IMDb’s well-documented bias against the horror genre, but the most damning rating came from Stephen King himself. “The problem with that film is that I was coked out of my mind all through its production, and I really didn’t know what I was doing. I learned a lot from the experience, however, and I would like to try directing again some time,” he explained in an interview for the 2003 book “Hollywood’s Stephen King” by Tony Magistrale.
Sadly, King has never directed another film since then. While failure may be the best teacher when it comes to learning a skill, as time went on, it seemed like King came to consider “Maximum Overdrive” such a failure that the only lesson was to never direct again. Perhaps it was better for him to stick with his writing, where he has an intuitive understanding of how every scene should be written and paced. As an author, King has a knack for understanding how and when to dive into a character’s perspective or vividly describe things while still staying true to a character’s personality. As a director, meanwhile, King seemed to flail 24/7. As his production assistant Chip Hacker once explained:
“Stephen King had a very strong idea about the movie, but he was not able to translate it into images, you know what I mean? I do think writing and directing are very different talents, and it’s hard enough to be good at one of them.”