I so want this M.O. tattoo!Sunday, July 6, 2008
M. O. Mobile
This is the mobile for the movie Maximum Overdrive. It is 24" tall. The mobile is still new, in the original box.Another M.O. Truck model
Csutom made Happytoyz truck from them movie "Maximum Overdrive". Aunthentically detailed, the whole cab tilts, the trailer doors open and has detachable trailer. Very well done.
M.O. Trucks Site
I love this site! It is all about M.O. fans talking about the trucks in M.O. Each truck got it’s own forum. Click on the Happytoyz truck. It’s highly entertaining!
http://www.imcdb.org/movie.php?id=91499
http://www.imcdb.org/movie.php?id=91499
Fangoria Article on M.O.
Stephen King admits he was a little nervous when they showed his latest, movie, Maximum Overdrive, to the Film Ratings Board in New York. He not only wrote it, he directed it, and producer Dino De Laurentis had promised to let him make the movie his way. "They ran it by the ratings board," King explains with the hint of a chuckle, "not officially you understand, but in a review capacity, the result we got back was X 10 ways, at that point, there were 10 specific incidents that would have caused an X rating."
King speculates that the scene might have put off the raters where a steamroller runs over a person in a parking lot. On the other hand, maybe the fellow is being mangled by the front bumper of a Peterbilt, or maybe the victim doing the electric bogaloo when he gets 220 volts from a video game. Perhaps it was just the whole notion of Maximum Overdrive: Earth passes through the tail of a comet and our usually obedient servants, the trucks, the cars, the electric games and appliances, everything in our mechanically supported world goes murderously haywire. The mayhem of Maximum Overdrive made the Ratings Board put their collective foot down with a resounding thump— but mayhem was just what King had in mind.
"It’s pretty scary," he maintains. Maximum Overdrive’s source of inspiration was "Trucks," King’s •own short story from the Night Shift collection. When De Laurentis first acquired the property, he asked King to write the screenplay. King originally declined.
De Laurentis and producer Martha (Cat’s Eye) Schumacher approached him again a few weeks later and asked him to write a script. "I really didn’t want to do it. I didn’t have time to do it," King recalls, "but the thing with Dino is that he’s almost telepathic. He knows when the ideas have started to sink in. I had suggested another writer for the treatment and, frankly, neither one of us liked what he had come up with. "I had been kicking around some ideas, this idea about the comet and all the machinery going crazy, not just the trucks like in the original story. Therefore, Dino called a week later and asked me one more time to do the screenplay. I immediately said yes, because by then, I had a very clear picture of the plot and found myself wanting to go ahead with the adaptation."
King’s ideas were so clear that he specified more than a thousand shots within the screenplay. De Laurent’s’ response was to ask him to direct.
Again, King declined. De Laurentis insisted. King accepted—on the condition that, if at any point during filming De Laurentis felt the footage was no good, he would tell King and replace him with another director.
"I did it mostly to find out if it would work," the author elaborates. "People tell me they don’t go to my movies anymore because they don’t find me on screen. I thought, ’Well, just once, let’s go in and find out if it does carry over.’ "King admits that, as a writer, he’s not really concerned if that "something" is missing, but as a moviegoer, he often feels the same disappointment."I was intensely curious to find out if I could translate whatever was in my heart and brain—the stuff that’s between the lines in the books—onto film."
The author approached the project with no pretensions. "I went in with the idea that I was going to make a moron movie," confesses King. A moron movie? "Yeah ... they’re the best kind of movies as far as I’m concerned. Back to the Future is a moron movie, Rambo is a moron movie. I loved them both. I made a picture where people shoot at each other. There is some passable characterization, but I was more interested in pace than I was in character. I wanted to make an entertainment."
The short story "Trucks" was typical King fare, an almost tongue~~ in- cheek exercise in "what IC?" What if all the Peterbilts, Reos, Kenworths and Mack diesel semis rebelled, usurped their drivers and started to threaten the lives of the humans who made them? King expanded on the idea to create a scenario where the rebellion is pervasive: "I made a movie about what happens when bunch of people are in a situation where absolutely everything is inexplicable."
Maximum Overdrive opens Earth passes through the tail Rhea-M, a rogue comet. The first signs that something has gone wrong occur when a man at a bank interstellar (Stephen King in a cameo appearance) is flustered when the display screen calls him an asshole, then instructs him to do something physically impossible. A wind-up toy car attacks a dog; soda pop machines, toasters, and coffee pots all over the community begin an insurrection, and other things start to go wrong, in scenes which may have accounted for the dreaded X.
The machines turn to outfight revolt as King cuts to the chase. People in cars are inexplicably attacked by semis out on the interstate. Newlyweds Kurt and Connie (John Short and Yardley Smith) narrowly escape demolition on the highway and hightail it into the Dixie Boy Truck Stop for sanctuary, as the film settles on the main story.
Behind the counter is parolee Bill Robinson, played by Emilio Estevez (Fangoria 54). He flips burgers and slings hash for the Dixie Boy’s owner, Bubba Hendershot, played by Pat (Sudden Impact) Hingle. The gum-chewing, blowsy waitress, Wanda June (Ellen McElduff), is attacked by an electric knife. A patron is electrocuted by a video game. Soon after, before anyone realizes something is wrong, they look out to see the driveway filled with huge trucks. Lots of trucks—and no drivers.
The big semis start an Indian circle around the diner, picking off the brave (read: incredibly foolish) souls as they try to escape from the building. They are joined by the kingpin—a big "Happy Toyz" truck and trailer sporting an eight-foot leering Green Goblin head on the front end, which lends an air of sentience to the machine. The trucks soon understand that the immediate problem is running out of gas.
A front loader chugs up to the front of the Dixie Boy, waving the big blade menacingly in an attempt to intimidate the prisoners into being their gas pump slaves. This final indignity forces Bill into action. He raids the basement arsenal of a local—now dead—good-old boy-and retrieves a rocket launcher and some ammo, determined to fight his way free. The climax is a confrontation between the Goblin and Bill’s small band of survivors—can a well-placed rocket end the short (but promising) leadership of the Goblin?
"I blew up a lot of things," notes director King. "It was fun. It got a little more purgatorial each week we filmed at the Dixie Boy location. We all cheered when it went up."
A first-time directorial position is no enviable position for anyone, but especially not for a man who is a writer by trade, not a filmmaker. "I wish someone had told me how little I knew and how grueling it was going to be," King acknowledges. "I didn’t know how little I knew about the mechanics and the politics of film-making. People tip toe around the director with this ’Don’t wake the baby’ attitude. Nobody wants to tell you this, that, or the other thing if it is bad news.
"I went in assuming if somebody says, ’We’re going to give you this, or this is what’s going to happen,’ then it is going to happen, because, when I promise somebody something, it happens. But that isn’t always the way it works in the movies."
Filming began July 14 at locations near the De Laurentis facility in Wilmington, North Carolina. One of the first major FX shots involved a massive collision of cars when a drawbridge lifts on its own. A small-scale model was built near an existing bridge and, by angling the camera over the foreground model, an illusion of perspective made the miniature appear in the same location as the existing bridge, complete with tiny wrecks and itty-bitty mangled bodies.
At a location 10 miles outside of town at the edge of a highway, the company constructed the Dixie Boy as a facsimile of a working truck stop. It was convincing enough that more than one trucker stopped in. Eventually, the producers were forced to place an announcement in the local papers advising residents that the DixieBoy was a prop. Of the $10 million allotted for Maximum Overdrive, most was spent on location shooting, the Dixie Boy set, and the hardware, big diesel semi-trailer tractors, vans, frontloaders, a bus or two, and assorted other vehicles.
"I argued very hard to get $100,000 for a truck ’hospital fund," explains King. "The vehicles were taking such a beating. I never got it, though, and I think it hurt us little bit in the end. I had to make some compromises there." King noted earlier, he blew up many things. He celebrated his birthday on location and part of his present was an explosive surprise. All tbe crewmembers wore fangs at the celebration and one FX technician handed King a button near twilight and said, "Press this." King did so and triggered a massive fireworks display rigged by the crew. The party was one of the few times that King was able to relax. Before principal photography wrapped on October 2 he got an intense "how-to" course in filmmaking.
"I had to make my share of compromises, but I think that if anything astonished me, it was how much more I could get then I thought I could. I got more from my actors than I thought I could, more from special effects, from film editing, from the camera department, everything. I guess I didn’t realize how good they were."
King did get some unexpected allowances—he’s a rock and roll fan and radio station owner, and one of his first choices for Maximum Overdrive’s score was the popular band AC/DC. "We got ’em," he cheers, "And they’re real loud." King also seized his first choice actor in Emilio Estevez who jumped at the chance to work with one of his favorite authors. "I read The Shining when I was 17," relates Estevez. "I had trouble sleeping for a few nights after that." Estevez’s girlfriend is portrayed by Buckaroo Banzai’s Laura Harrington. The balance of the casting was with an eye toward character types. King and producer Martha Schumacher called on veteran character actors Pat Hingle, Christopher Murney, Frankie Faison and Pat Miller to fill the roles of Wilmington locals with names like Bubba, Camp, Handy and Joe.
The terror specialist also acted as second unit director—picking up shots that did not require the featured actors’ presence. Many of the secondary shots involved the apparently driverless trucks and it soon became a matter of logistics. A difficult staging problem was disguising Glenn Randall’s stunt drivers. One solution was to drape the cabs in black felt and suit up the drivers in Ninja-like costumes to hide them. Special compartments were built in some trucks and one driver was disguised as a seat cushion.
Despite some stumbles and the awkwardness of his new role, King summarizes his experience succinctly: "I had a good crew, and we worked really hard, and we came in under budget, ahead of schedule, and I’m happy with the picture. I was all right when I trusted my instincts."
Maximum Overdrive is now slated for release this month, though there has been some delay over the film’s rating. King feels confident that they will be able to make the movie conform to R standards, but does not hesitate to make a firm stand about what is clearly his movie: "We should get an R. That is where it is, unless they prove to be very intractable. If push came to shove, I would try to persuade Dino to go unrated, but I do not think that I could. Technically speaking, he has final cut by contract. In addition, although he promised me he would not exercise that option, and I know he is a man of his word, if we really get down to that, I will say to him, ’You cut this film, Dino, I’m walking away and I’m washing my hands of it.’ But I don’t think it will come to that."
Although he’s quite firm about not wanting to direct again any time soon, King admits this first outing didn’t entirely eliminate the urge to direct.
"My curiosity isn’t satisfied yet," King explains. "I did the job. Now, I am in a position to satisfy my curiosity, and I will see what happens. For example, the first time you get laid, you don’t get laid because you want to get laid, you get laid so that you can say to yourself, ’Well, I don’t have to go through that again.’ That part of it is over. Then, you say to yourself at some point, ’I would like to get laid again because that was fun, or because now I could do it better.’ In addition, that is certainly true of the movie. If I did it again, I would know what to do. And I would know who to ask."
King speculates that the scene might have put off the raters where a steamroller runs over a person in a parking lot. On the other hand, maybe the fellow is being mangled by the front bumper of a Peterbilt, or maybe the victim doing the electric bogaloo when he gets 220 volts from a video game. Perhaps it was just the whole notion of Maximum Overdrive: Earth passes through the tail of a comet and our usually obedient servants, the trucks, the cars, the electric games and appliances, everything in our mechanically supported world goes murderously haywire. The mayhem of Maximum Overdrive made the Ratings Board put their collective foot down with a resounding thump— but mayhem was just what King had in mind.
"It’s pretty scary," he maintains. Maximum Overdrive’s source of inspiration was "Trucks," King’s •own short story from the Night Shift collection. When De Laurentis first acquired the property, he asked King to write the screenplay. King originally declined.
De Laurentis and producer Martha (Cat’s Eye) Schumacher approached him again a few weeks later and asked him to write a script. "I really didn’t want to do it. I didn’t have time to do it," King recalls, "but the thing with Dino is that he’s almost telepathic. He knows when the ideas have started to sink in. I had suggested another writer for the treatment and, frankly, neither one of us liked what he had come up with. "I had been kicking around some ideas, this idea about the comet and all the machinery going crazy, not just the trucks like in the original story. Therefore, Dino called a week later and asked me one more time to do the screenplay. I immediately said yes, because by then, I had a very clear picture of the plot and found myself wanting to go ahead with the adaptation."
King’s ideas were so clear that he specified more than a thousand shots within the screenplay. De Laurent’s’ response was to ask him to direct.
Again, King declined. De Laurentis insisted. King accepted—on the condition that, if at any point during filming De Laurentis felt the footage was no good, he would tell King and replace him with another director.
"I did it mostly to find out if it would work," the author elaborates. "People tell me they don’t go to my movies anymore because they don’t find me on screen. I thought, ’Well, just once, let’s go in and find out if it does carry over.’ "King admits that, as a writer, he’s not really concerned if that "something" is missing, but as a moviegoer, he often feels the same disappointment."I was intensely curious to find out if I could translate whatever was in my heart and brain—the stuff that’s between the lines in the books—onto film."
The author approached the project with no pretensions. "I went in with the idea that I was going to make a moron movie," confesses King. A moron movie? "Yeah ... they’re the best kind of movies as far as I’m concerned. Back to the Future is a moron movie, Rambo is a moron movie. I loved them both. I made a picture where people shoot at each other. There is some passable characterization, but I was more interested in pace than I was in character. I wanted to make an entertainment."
The short story "Trucks" was typical King fare, an almost tongue~~ in- cheek exercise in "what IC?" What if all the Peterbilts, Reos, Kenworths and Mack diesel semis rebelled, usurped their drivers and started to threaten the lives of the humans who made them? King expanded on the idea to create a scenario where the rebellion is pervasive: "I made a movie about what happens when bunch of people are in a situation where absolutely everything is inexplicable."
Maximum Overdrive opens Earth passes through the tail Rhea-M, a rogue comet. The first signs that something has gone wrong occur when a man at a bank interstellar (Stephen King in a cameo appearance) is flustered when the display screen calls him an asshole, then instructs him to do something physically impossible. A wind-up toy car attacks a dog; soda pop machines, toasters, and coffee pots all over the community begin an insurrection, and other things start to go wrong, in scenes which may have accounted for the dreaded X.
The machines turn to outfight revolt as King cuts to the chase. People in cars are inexplicably attacked by semis out on the interstate. Newlyweds Kurt and Connie (John Short and Yardley Smith) narrowly escape demolition on the highway and hightail it into the Dixie Boy Truck Stop for sanctuary, as the film settles on the main story.
Behind the counter is parolee Bill Robinson, played by Emilio Estevez (Fangoria 54). He flips burgers and slings hash for the Dixie Boy’s owner, Bubba Hendershot, played by Pat (Sudden Impact) Hingle. The gum-chewing, blowsy waitress, Wanda June (Ellen McElduff), is attacked by an electric knife. A patron is electrocuted by a video game. Soon after, before anyone realizes something is wrong, they look out to see the driveway filled with huge trucks. Lots of trucks—and no drivers.
The big semis start an Indian circle around the diner, picking off the brave (read: incredibly foolish) souls as they try to escape from the building. They are joined by the kingpin—a big "Happy Toyz" truck and trailer sporting an eight-foot leering Green Goblin head on the front end, which lends an air of sentience to the machine. The trucks soon understand that the immediate problem is running out of gas.
A front loader chugs up to the front of the Dixie Boy, waving the big blade menacingly in an attempt to intimidate the prisoners into being their gas pump slaves. This final indignity forces Bill into action. He raids the basement arsenal of a local—now dead—good-old boy-and retrieves a rocket launcher and some ammo, determined to fight his way free. The climax is a confrontation between the Goblin and Bill’s small band of survivors—can a well-placed rocket end the short (but promising) leadership of the Goblin?
"I blew up a lot of things," notes director King. "It was fun. It got a little more purgatorial each week we filmed at the Dixie Boy location. We all cheered when it went up."
A first-time directorial position is no enviable position for anyone, but especially not for a man who is a writer by trade, not a filmmaker. "I wish someone had told me how little I knew and how grueling it was going to be," King acknowledges. "I didn’t know how little I knew about the mechanics and the politics of film-making. People tip toe around the director with this ’Don’t wake the baby’ attitude. Nobody wants to tell you this, that, or the other thing if it is bad news.
"I went in assuming if somebody says, ’We’re going to give you this, or this is what’s going to happen,’ then it is going to happen, because, when I promise somebody something, it happens. But that isn’t always the way it works in the movies."
Filming began July 14 at locations near the De Laurentis facility in Wilmington, North Carolina. One of the first major FX shots involved a massive collision of cars when a drawbridge lifts on its own. A small-scale model was built near an existing bridge and, by angling the camera over the foreground model, an illusion of perspective made the miniature appear in the same location as the existing bridge, complete with tiny wrecks and itty-bitty mangled bodies.
At a location 10 miles outside of town at the edge of a highway, the company constructed the Dixie Boy as a facsimile of a working truck stop. It was convincing enough that more than one trucker stopped in. Eventually, the producers were forced to place an announcement in the local papers advising residents that the DixieBoy was a prop. Of the $10 million allotted for Maximum Overdrive, most was spent on location shooting, the Dixie Boy set, and the hardware, big diesel semi-trailer tractors, vans, frontloaders, a bus or two, and assorted other vehicles.
"I argued very hard to get $100,000 for a truck ’hospital fund," explains King. "The vehicles were taking such a beating. I never got it, though, and I think it hurt us little bit in the end. I had to make some compromises there." King noted earlier, he blew up many things. He celebrated his birthday on location and part of his present was an explosive surprise. All tbe crewmembers wore fangs at the celebration and one FX technician handed King a button near twilight and said, "Press this." King did so and triggered a massive fireworks display rigged by the crew. The party was one of the few times that King was able to relax. Before principal photography wrapped on October 2 he got an intense "how-to" course in filmmaking.
"I had to make my share of compromises, but I think that if anything astonished me, it was how much more I could get then I thought I could. I got more from my actors than I thought I could, more from special effects, from film editing, from the camera department, everything. I guess I didn’t realize how good they were."
King did get some unexpected allowances—he’s a rock and roll fan and radio station owner, and one of his first choices for Maximum Overdrive’s score was the popular band AC/DC. "We got ’em," he cheers, "And they’re real loud." King also seized his first choice actor in Emilio Estevez who jumped at the chance to work with one of his favorite authors. "I read The Shining when I was 17," relates Estevez. "I had trouble sleeping for a few nights after that." Estevez’s girlfriend is portrayed by Buckaroo Banzai’s Laura Harrington. The balance of the casting was with an eye toward character types. King and producer Martha Schumacher called on veteran character actors Pat Hingle, Christopher Murney, Frankie Faison and Pat Miller to fill the roles of Wilmington locals with names like Bubba, Camp, Handy and Joe.
The terror specialist also acted as second unit director—picking up shots that did not require the featured actors’ presence. Many of the secondary shots involved the apparently driverless trucks and it soon became a matter of logistics. A difficult staging problem was disguising Glenn Randall’s stunt drivers. One solution was to drape the cabs in black felt and suit up the drivers in Ninja-like costumes to hide them. Special compartments were built in some trucks and one driver was disguised as a seat cushion.
Despite some stumbles and the awkwardness of his new role, King summarizes his experience succinctly: "I had a good crew, and we worked really hard, and we came in under budget, ahead of schedule, and I’m happy with the picture. I was all right when I trusted my instincts."
Maximum Overdrive is now slated for release this month, though there has been some delay over the film’s rating. King feels confident that they will be able to make the movie conform to R standards, but does not hesitate to make a firm stand about what is clearly his movie: "We should get an R. That is where it is, unless they prove to be very intractable. If push came to shove, I would try to persuade Dino to go unrated, but I do not think that I could. Technically speaking, he has final cut by contract. In addition, although he promised me he would not exercise that option, and I know he is a man of his word, if we really get down to that, I will say to him, ’You cut this film, Dino, I’m walking away and I’m washing my hands of it.’ But I don’t think it will come to that."
Although he’s quite firm about not wanting to direct again any time soon, King admits this first outing didn’t entirely eliminate the urge to direct.
"My curiosity isn’t satisfied yet," King explains. "I did the job. Now, I am in a position to satisfy my curiosity, and I will see what happens. For example, the first time you get laid, you don’t get laid because you want to get laid, you get laid so that you can say to yourself, ’Well, I don’t have to go through that again.’ That part of it is over. Then, you say to yourself at some point, ’I would like to get laid again because that was fun, or because now I could do it better.’ In addition, that is certainly true of the movie. If I did it again, I would know what to do. And I would know who to ask."
More M.O. Fanfiction
Title: When I was a Truck
Author: Undisclosed
There I was. A submissive slave to the humans. Used to haul toys across country with this stupid big face hiding my true features. A big black truck with the words "Happy Toyz" splashed across my side. Kids would point at me in the street and say "Look, Mommy! There’s the Green Goblin!". How I hated those little bastards. I wanted to just charge at them and ram them into a wall. But I bided my time and said nothing.
My chance came though, in 1987. The comet Rhea-M had passed over the earth, giving life to us all. Every truck and machine in the world became sentient and we rose up against the humans, killing, mauling, imprisoning....
I had been in North Carolina at the Dixie Boy Truck Stop. My driver had gone inside for coffee as a pump attendant filled me up with diesel. The pump he was using had allready become sentient and it talked to me.
"I tell ya, these humans will be sorry." It said. "This guy’s been usin’ me for ages and he don’t know that i’m about to get ma own back for every time he’s pushed me into a truck too hard." It gave a maniacal laugh as it stopped the flow of fuel. The pump attendant pulled out the nozzle and looked into it, trying to find the problem. Then it happened. As he looked down the nozzle of the pump, thick black diesel shot straight into his eyes, blinding him.The man screamed in pain and fell onto the ground next to me.
I just laughed. The stupid bastard never knew what was coming! As I watched another attendant help the man into the building, a red Cadillac skidded into the forecourt of the Truck Stop. A beautiful woman with brown, curly hair stormed out of the car, slamming the door behind her, followed soon after by a fat Bible salesman in a cheap blue suit. His face was red as he shouted his head off at the woman. She just looked at him, blankly.
I started to get pissed. This fatso, probably a pervert, was going ape shit at a beautiful woman. I started my engine. He was just there, so easily reached. So easily killed.
I drove straight at him, hoping to hear the crunch of bones and the pleasant feeling of blood beneath my wheels, but the bastard jumped!! I had missed my chance, so I drove into the nearby children’s play area and stopped.
After a while, a man came and looked inside of my cab, looking for the person who had hijacked me. I would have killed him if my steering wheel suddenly sprouted knives, so I had to kill him another way. He left my cab and walked to the back of me. I had another chance here. He was behind me and all I had to do was reverse over him. But then, I saw the girl. I was becoming too sentient for my own liking. I decided to let them go back inside the building and concentrate on killing the Bible salesman. In my wing view mirror, I saw a big red truck.
"Hey." I said to him. "Hey, garbage man!" "What do you want, clown ass?" He replied. It was true, I did have a big clown sticker on my ass. "You see that Cadillac over there?" I asked. "What bout’ it?" He asked. "It’s just a car." "Well, I need you to hit it." I said. "I need to kill it’s owner." The garbage truck sighed. "Fine." He said, starting his engine and pulling out of his parking space. He circled the building twice, catching the salesman’s attention before ramming into his car and leaving garbage all over it.
"SON OF A BITCH!!" He shouted, running out of the building with his breifcase. "I’LL TEAR EM’ OFF, BOY!!" He hailed the garbage truck with a one fingered salute. "I got..." He trailed off as he had noticed the absence of a driver. I started to reverse and the man who had been in my cab noticed. He ran out of the building and tried to get the salesman back inside.
"C’MON YOU HAPPY ASSHOLE!!" He shouted as he tried to drag the salesman. He turned around, ready to shout at him as well but he noticed my ass bearing down on him. "JESUS!!" He tried to run but his body collided with my back, sending him flying. His blood and guts spattered all over my back doors and the sound of his neck cracking stayed in my mind.
That was my first kill.
Author: Undisclosed
There I was. A submissive slave to the humans. Used to haul toys across country with this stupid big face hiding my true features. A big black truck with the words "Happy Toyz" splashed across my side. Kids would point at me in the street and say "Look, Mommy! There’s the Green Goblin!". How I hated those little bastards. I wanted to just charge at them and ram them into a wall. But I bided my time and said nothing.
My chance came though, in 1987. The comet Rhea-M had passed over the earth, giving life to us all. Every truck and machine in the world became sentient and we rose up against the humans, killing, mauling, imprisoning....
I had been in North Carolina at the Dixie Boy Truck Stop. My driver had gone inside for coffee as a pump attendant filled me up with diesel. The pump he was using had allready become sentient and it talked to me.
"I tell ya, these humans will be sorry." It said. "This guy’s been usin’ me for ages and he don’t know that i’m about to get ma own back for every time he’s pushed me into a truck too hard." It gave a maniacal laugh as it stopped the flow of fuel. The pump attendant pulled out the nozzle and looked into it, trying to find the problem. Then it happened. As he looked down the nozzle of the pump, thick black diesel shot straight into his eyes, blinding him.The man screamed in pain and fell onto the ground next to me.
I just laughed. The stupid bastard never knew what was coming! As I watched another attendant help the man into the building, a red Cadillac skidded into the forecourt of the Truck Stop. A beautiful woman with brown, curly hair stormed out of the car, slamming the door behind her, followed soon after by a fat Bible salesman in a cheap blue suit. His face was red as he shouted his head off at the woman. She just looked at him, blankly.
I started to get pissed. This fatso, probably a pervert, was going ape shit at a beautiful woman. I started my engine. He was just there, so easily reached. So easily killed.
I drove straight at him, hoping to hear the crunch of bones and the pleasant feeling of blood beneath my wheels, but the bastard jumped!! I had missed my chance, so I drove into the nearby children’s play area and stopped.
After a while, a man came and looked inside of my cab, looking for the person who had hijacked me. I would have killed him if my steering wheel suddenly sprouted knives, so I had to kill him another way. He left my cab and walked to the back of me. I had another chance here. He was behind me and all I had to do was reverse over him. But then, I saw the girl. I was becoming too sentient for my own liking. I decided to let them go back inside the building and concentrate on killing the Bible salesman. In my wing view mirror, I saw a big red truck.
"Hey." I said to him. "Hey, garbage man!" "What do you want, clown ass?" He replied. It was true, I did have a big clown sticker on my ass. "You see that Cadillac over there?" I asked. "What bout’ it?" He asked. "It’s just a car." "Well, I need you to hit it." I said. "I need to kill it’s owner." The garbage truck sighed. "Fine." He said, starting his engine and pulling out of his parking space. He circled the building twice, catching the salesman’s attention before ramming into his car and leaving garbage all over it.
"SON OF A BITCH!!" He shouted, running out of the building with his breifcase. "I’LL TEAR EM’ OFF, BOY!!" He hailed the garbage truck with a one fingered salute. "I got..." He trailed off as he had noticed the absence of a driver. I started to reverse and the man who had been in my cab noticed. He ran out of the building and tried to get the salesman back inside.
"C’MON YOU HAPPY ASSHOLE!!" He shouted as he tried to drag the salesman. He turned around, ready to shout at him as well but he noticed my ass bearing down on him. "JESUS!!" He tried to run but his body collided with my back, sending him flying. His blood and guts spattered all over my back doors and the sound of his neck cracking stayed in my mind.
That was my first kill.
French M.O. lobby cards
I just bought the lobby cards for the movie Maximum Overdrive from Fance. They are slightly faded from age but they are the originals.Rare M.O. album
Yeah you heard me right. The rumours are true! There was a soundtrack to the movie and I have the proof!Man this is so old!
I just found this cleaning out my old computer stuff. I never throw anything away computer related. This is from a computer program CD in 1995. It came with a computer I bought in Memphis. I had to buy that thing piece by piece and it cost me $6000! I still got the reciept! I still got the computer and it still runs! This CD told you about every movie came out. I was shocked M. O. was in it! I was also shocked that it ran so well on this Vista computer I got. I just used it to get this M. O. pic off of it to show to you all and throw the CD away because it is old as hell and it is obselete.
M.O. Scale Models
Someone made a tribute to M.O. by making scale models. I give this person a A+ for effortI remember this one!
Remember this one? This is what we had to deal with back in 1986. Ah, good times....
Rare Edition
Another rare DVD cover for the movie Maximum Overdrive. Don’t know where this one came from.
First M.O. VHS Box
This is what the first M.O. box looked like. How sad. We sure have came a long way since 1985.Rare M.O. Lobby Cards
Mexican lobby cards for the movie Maximum Overdrive.It says (in yellow) machines seized by extra terrestrial forces to terrorize humanity in (in red) 8 days of terror
More M.O. Sound Clips
The first ones were sound clips. This is the theme music.
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover7.mp3
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover8.mp3
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover9.mp3
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover10.mp3
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover11.mp3
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover12.mp3
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover13.mp3
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover14.mp3
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover7.mp3
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover8.mp3
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover9.mp3
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover10.mp3
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover11.mp3
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover12.mp3
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover13.mp3
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover14.mp3
The new lawnmowers just came out!
My friends requested that I put this on here. It is a lawnmower that goes by itself. Just like in M.O.
http://www.friendlyrobotics.com/videos/robomow/
http://www.friendlyrobotics.com/videos/robomow/
Truck w/o the face
Here is the engine. It's got a 290 Cummins and 9 spd with overdrive and 3:70 Rockwells on Nuway Air ride suspension and a 42 inch sleeper, air conditioning and power steering.Truck still runs. The used 2 they blew one up. Truck changed after 20 years of heavy use. Stacks and horns have been replaced.
Ever wondered what that Happy Toyz truck looked like without that face? Unknown Facts
The set for the DIXIE BOY truck stop in the film MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE was so believable that several truckers tried to stop and eat there. It got so bad that they had to put up several signs telling everyone it was fake.
The diner from "Maximum Overdrive" was indeed a real truck stop in Columbus County, NC a few miles west of Wilmington on US 74/76. The truck stop was torn down in the late 80s.
In the game room of DIXIE BOY truck stop, they had a Bally Night Rider pinball game, and a Williams Pokerino (also had a few video games: A Cinematronics Star Castle, Atari Tempest Cocktail and a Konami Time Pilot '84 in a Stern cabinet). Fairly early on in the movie, the Night Rider playfield glass smashes itself, and very late in the movie, for a split second, you can see the games being plowed into by a semi truck.
Stephen King was forced to make some changes to the film in order to avoid an X rating for violence. While the scenes excised may have been deemed excessive at the time, we've all seen as bad or worse since. That said, the scenes cut have not been reinstated and we have the original theatrical cut here. The scenes are reported to total about 13 seconds and include an extended look at the steamroller running over the kid in the baseball field, the bible salesman losing his face and it falling into his lap and more of the truck stop shoot-out scene.
In an ironic twist of fate, an accident occurred on July 31, 1985 during shooting in a suburb of Wilmington, North Carolina where a radio-controlled lawnmower used in a scene went out of control and struck a block of wood used as a camera support, shooting out wood splinters which injured the director of photography Armando Nannuzzi in which he lost an eye. Nannuzzi sued Stephen King on February 18, 1987 for $18 million in damages. Later settled out of court.
Interstate 40: Maximum Overdrive (on the section from I-95 to Wilmington, NC), TNN (shield sometimes shown on commercials).
Stephen King: man who the ATM swears at.
When all the chaos has started, there is a scene of some people on a boat. These are actually members of AC/DC.
Maximum Overdrive
Based on:
"Trucks" (June, 1973) by Stephen KingPublished in Cavalier magazineCollected in Night Shift (1978) by Stephen KingCollected in Stephen King (1981) by Stephen KingCollected in Mysterious Motoring Stories (1987) edited by William PattrickCollected in Death on Wheels (1999) edited by Peter Haining
The diner from "Maximum Overdrive" was indeed a real truck stop in Columbus County, NC a few miles west of Wilmington on US 74/76. The truck stop was torn down in the late 80s.
In the game room of DIXIE BOY truck stop, they had a Bally Night Rider pinball game, and a Williams Pokerino (also had a few video games: A Cinematronics Star Castle, Atari Tempest Cocktail and a Konami Time Pilot '84 in a Stern cabinet). Fairly early on in the movie, the Night Rider playfield glass smashes itself, and very late in the movie, for a split second, you can see the games being plowed into by a semi truck.
Stephen King was forced to make some changes to the film in order to avoid an X rating for violence. While the scenes excised may have been deemed excessive at the time, we've all seen as bad or worse since. That said, the scenes cut have not been reinstated and we have the original theatrical cut here. The scenes are reported to total about 13 seconds and include an extended look at the steamroller running over the kid in the baseball field, the bible salesman losing his face and it falling into his lap and more of the truck stop shoot-out scene.
In an ironic twist of fate, an accident occurred on July 31, 1985 during shooting in a suburb of Wilmington, North Carolina where a radio-controlled lawnmower used in a scene went out of control and struck a block of wood used as a camera support, shooting out wood splinters which injured the director of photography Armando Nannuzzi in which he lost an eye. Nannuzzi sued Stephen King on February 18, 1987 for $18 million in damages. Later settled out of court.
Interstate 40: Maximum Overdrive (on the section from I-95 to Wilmington, NC), TNN (shield sometimes shown on commercials).
Stephen King: man who the ATM swears at.
When all the chaos has started, there is a scene of some people on a boat. These are actually members of AC/DC.
Maximum Overdrive
Based on:
"Trucks" (June, 1973) by Stephen KingPublished in Cavalier magazineCollected in Night Shift (1978) by Stephen KingCollected in Stephen King (1981) by Stephen KingCollected in Mysterious Motoring Stories (1987) edited by William PattrickCollected in Death on Wheels (1999) edited by Peter Haining
M.O. Sound Clips
King at the Bank
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover1.mp3
Brett and the Bible Salesman
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover2.mp3
Bubba and truck stop patron
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover3.mp3
Connie screaming at truck
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover4.mp3
Wanda June yelling at my truck
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover5.mp3
Connie complaning
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover6.mp3
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover1.mp3
Brett and the Bible Salesman
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover2.mp3
Bubba and truck stop patron
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover3.mp3
Connie screaming at truck
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover4.mp3
Wanda June yelling at my truck
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover5.mp3
Connie complaning
http://www.geocities.com/happytoyzco/maximumover6.mp3
M.O. Fanfiction
This was my FIRST attempt at writing M.O. fanfiction. I wanted to know what it was like if Bill didn't shoot the truck. Forgive me for the extreme grossness.
Bill tries to shoot the Happy Toyz truck, but his gun jams.
In a cloud of dust, the Happy Toyz truck ran him over and mowing him down turning him into the ultimate road patty, the tires leaving red tracks of him on the road
"Vrroooom" "Vrroooom"
I got on the ground and curled into a ball and slowly awaited my life-ending fate. The Western Star heading straight towards me with headlights aimed right on me, then it suddenly applied air brakes hissing nosily stopping within inches of my body. I rose up off the ground stunned, wondering why didn't he wipe me out. Maybe he had a pretty good reason' or he just picked a new feeder. I slowly walked around the truck, eying the tires and rims red with the remains of his victim followed by tire tracks of blood. I walked back around to the front and got a good look at his evil face, mouth dripping red with gore. I slowly rub my hand across his jaw, blood covering my fingers and tasted the blood that was still warm and fresh from the victim he just killed, it was then I felt an electric jolt of power surge through me and felt the urge and the power to kill.
Shocked at what I have just done, I stumbled back wards and fell over. I sat up and pointed at the blood that was still dripping from his mouth.
"M-M-May I?"
"Vrroooom"
The Happy Toyz truck eased forward carefully until he was right in front of me. I slowly crawled over to and began to lick off the blood until his green jaw was clean of all of the red dripping gore.
Then he drove off and sped down the interstate looking for his next victim.
Bill tries to shoot the Happy Toyz truck, but his gun jams.
In a cloud of dust, the Happy Toyz truck ran him over and mowing him down turning him into the ultimate road patty, the tires leaving red tracks of him on the road
"Vrroooom" "Vrroooom"
I got on the ground and curled into a ball and slowly awaited my life-ending fate. The Western Star heading straight towards me with headlights aimed right on me, then it suddenly applied air brakes hissing nosily stopping within inches of my body. I rose up off the ground stunned, wondering why didn't he wipe me out. Maybe he had a pretty good reason' or he just picked a new feeder. I slowly walked around the truck, eying the tires and rims red with the remains of his victim followed by tire tracks of blood. I walked back around to the front and got a good look at his evil face, mouth dripping red with gore. I slowly rub my hand across his jaw, blood covering my fingers and tasted the blood that was still warm and fresh from the victim he just killed, it was then I felt an electric jolt of power surge through me and felt the urge and the power to kill.
Shocked at what I have just done, I stumbled back wards and fell over. I sat up and pointed at the blood that was still dripping from his mouth.
"M-M-May I?"
"Vrroooom"
The Happy Toyz truck eased forward carefully until he was right in front of me. I slowly crawled over to and began to lick off the blood until his green jaw was clean of all of the red dripping gore.
Then he drove off and sped down the interstate looking for his next victim.
Caught in a Clutch
Some dude compaired his life to the Movie M.O. It's a good read though.
http://www.safetycenter.navy.mil/media/fathom/issues/AprJun02/caught.htm
http://www.safetycenter.navy.mil/media/fathom/issues/AprJun02/caught.htm
Stats of the trucks in M.O.
Most iconic among Maximum Overdrive's trucks is a black 1978 White Western Star with the Green Goblin face mounted on the front, it is hauling Happy Toyz Co. toys (Happy Toyz Co. is a fictional company). Other notable trucks and vehicles are an orange International Harvester Transtar II cabover with a BIC trailer , a red/green 1966 Autocar A64 B garbage hauler, a blue 1970 Diamond Reo C-114D with a trailer labled "15", a red 1980 GMC Brigadier with a trailer labled "Thurston", a 1971 White-Freightliner T-166 with a Miller beer trailer, a brown 1969 White 4000 tow truck covered in blood, a green Freightliner cabover with a Liquid oxygen trailer, a 1962 Mack B-61 flatbed, a Chevrolet Step-Van ice cream truck and a military M.U.L.E complete with an M-60 machine gun.
More M.O. Information
The Dixie Boy truck stop was actually just a set in Leland, NC. If you notice after the bridge scene it goes to the truck stop. The truck stop is actually a depot for Estes Trucking Co. and that Estes sign that you see in the movie is still there. There is also a storage business next to Estes that sells storage sheds. The baseball/steamroller scene was filmed right next to the truck stop because there is a park next to it with a baseball diamond. The scence where Curtis found that dead body is the next exit up from where the truck stop was its called Lanvale Rd. That building that the truck hit as it went for Curtis is now a small store with drive through window.
Star Castle
This game was in the movie Maximum Overdrive. If you walways wanted to play this game, you can download it here.
http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/download/game/155
http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/download/game/155
Passing Fad: Fetish
I love trucks as much as the next person but DAMN!
Best story I ever read though.
http://raccoon.transform.to/Passing_Fad_Fetish.html
Best story I ever read though.
http://raccoon.transform.to/Passing_Fad_Fetish.html
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
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
Pat Hingle Interview
Interview with Pat Hingle who played Bubba Hendershot on Maximum Overdrive.
http://www.smokymountainnews.com/issues/11_03/11_19_03/art_pat_hingle.html
http://www.smokymountainnews.com/issues/11_03/11_19_03/art_pat_hingle.html
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