FILM: BY STEPHEN KING,'MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE

By JON PARELES
Published: July 25, 1986

WHEN in doubt, Stephen King relies on disembodied forces - a poltergeist, telekinesis, evil spirits and, in ''Maximum Overdrive,'' an all-out revolt of the machines. The glass-breaking, blood-spattering, flame-spurting melee opens today at Movieland Eighth Street and other theaters.

Mr. King's movie of his own screenplay takes place in Wilmington, N.C., a locale that allows him to indulge almost every dumb-redneck stereotype. (Except one - there's no racial tension.) As the Earth moves into a comet's tail, all of a sudden bank machines swear, vending machines turn soda cans into projectiles, diesel pumps attack garage hands and a heavily traveled drawbridge opens on its own power. Within the first half-hour of the film, dozens of people meet gruesome deaths; there is blood on every fender.

Eventually the action settles at a Dixie Boy truck stop, where survivors of the carnage in town gradually gather. As per formula, there's a noble blond boy (J. C. Quinn, in his baseball uniform), a noble young man (Emilio Estevez), a tough-but-tender hitchhiker (Laura Harrington), a pair of hick newlyweds (John Short and Yeardley Smith), a cigar-puffing truck stop owner (Pat Hingle) and enough stray good old boys to fill any holes in the plot.

From its midway point, the movie might be called ''Attack of the Killer Trucks''; one, a toy store van with a demonic face on its grille, develops as much character as anyone in the cast. The trucks rumble and snort and chase victims off the road as heavy-metal guitar chords from the band AC/DC underline every collision. With bad guys, like a drunken Bible salesman, the vehicles get downright vindictive. Luckily, the truck stop just happens to have a cellar-full of heavy ordnance - the better to create spectacular, flaming explosions - and an underground escape route for the plucky survivors.

Mr. King has an eye for the hints of violence in ordinary objects, from electric knives to lawn mowers to a Mack truck with a menacing canine above its grille. An ice-cream truck, blood-stained, patrols decimated small-town streets tinkling out the song ''King of the Road.''
Yet by making the machines' malevolence so all-encompassing -so amoral - Mr. King loses the fillip of retribution in better horror films. For the most part, he has taken a promising notion - our dependence on our machines - and turned it into one long car-crunch movie, wheezing from setups to crackups. A cheap cold war twist in the final subtitles doesn't make ''Maximum Overdrive'' any less mechanical.

BLOOD AND TRUCKS-MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE, written for the screen and directed by Stephen King; director of photograpahy, Armando Nannuzzi; film editor, Evan Lottman; music by AC/DC; produced by Martha Schumacher; released by De Laurentiis Entertainment Group Inc. At Criterion, Broadway and 45th Street; Movieland Eighth Street, at University Place; 86th Street Twin, at Lexington Avenue; Olympia Quad, Broadway at 107th Street. Running time: 97 minutes. This film is rated R. Bill Robinson...Emilio Estevez; Hendershot...Pat Hingle; Brett...Laura Harrington; Connie...Yeardley Smith; Curt...John Short; Wanda June...Ellen McElduff; Duncan...J. C. Quinn; Camp Loman...Christopher Murney; Deke...Holter Graham; Handy...Frankie Faison.

Correction: August 13, 1986, Wednesday, Late City Final Edition