Stephen King has billions of books in print and a gazillion dollars. Yet all of this success couldn't prepare him for the world of movie making. In the mid-1980s King decided to step behind the camera to finally do his written work justice. The end result? MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE (1986), a film so goofy that it could only have been made by Stephen King. But don't get me wrong, MAX-O has so many redeeming qualities (car stunts, over-the-top deaths, killer arcades, AC/DC score, Pat Hingle's nose) that it is a joy to sit through for me. The US movie going public circa 1986? Not so much. Of the 36 Stephen King adaptations/cash ins given wide theatrical releases, this one came in 33rd in terms of box office gross. Who made who indeed!
Naturally the Stephen King name remained a viable brand and if it was made before it can only mean one thing to a Hollywood producer - remake! King's sole directorial effort 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 TRUCKS (1997). In this incarnation, folks are held captive by the title beasts in a rustic truck stop run by Ray (Timothy Busfield) in the town of Lunar, Nevada. Ray has moved here after the death of his wife with his son Logan (Brandon Fletcher). Also moving back to Lunar is Hope (the flat toned Brenda Bakke), who, after a bitter divorce, decides running hiking trips in her former hometown is the way to go. Surprisingly, Ray and Hope never kiss. A trio of prospective hikers arrive just before the trucks start to move on their own (no reason is given in this incarnation although they keep mentioning Area 51 nearby).
This was made-for-TV with a low budget and is decidedly less goofy and violent than King's film 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 abundant (for example, 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 (death by toy truck, death by killer hazmat suit, death by possessed cable truck) 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. You can almost imagine the producers talking this one over:
Producer #1: "The movie runs 85 minutes but need some extra oomph."
Producer #2: "We could add some gory kills. You know, random stuff of people being attacked by machines."
Producer #1: "What are you thinking?"
Producer #2: "How about we have a chemical clean-up crew heading to that crash site?"
Producer #1: "But what would kill them? Their truck?"
Producer #2: "No...lemme think...I GOT IT! Imagine the machine that controls their hazmat suits comes to life."
Producer #1: "I like it! You're a genius."
Producer #2: "I know."
Amazingly, the King name is still considered a hot commodity to film producers with over 16 films currently in a state of production or development. Keep on trucking I guess! Honestly, if I ever had an audience with Michael Bay, I'd tell him to keep his hands off the classic horror films and remake something like this. It has everything he loves - cars and explosions - and chances are you aren't going to get people crying over the desecration of a classic. Ah, who am I kidding? Bay could never produce something as entertaining as MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE and I think he would struggle to match the low-end quality of TRUCKS.
Prolific Canadian producer Pierre David could be called a lot of things, but “stupid” isn’t one of them. After exec-producing several movies for the then, up and coming director David Cronenberg (including VIDEODROME, 1983), Pierre David somehow managed to convince Cronenberg to sell him the rights to SCANNERS. I'm guessing this is one of those times when the thought of putting food on the table took precedent over artistic integrity. This was also before Cronenberg was a wise and grizzled industry veteran and had lawyers and agents to advise him against such crazy things. So in 1991 the world saw the first in a series of four low-budget sequels to the only Cronenberg film to be sequelized. Some can mount a case about how this is a terrible thing, but honestly I feel this is far less of a crime than many other higer-profile and more successful sequels such as FREDDY’S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE (1991), FRIDAY THE 13th PART 8 (1989) or how about THE BIRDS II (1994)? Of course the SCANNERS sequels are not on the level of Cronenberg’s original, and I don't think anyone should expect them to be, but the original was an exploitation film and set-up a concept that would easily translate into a cheap sequel that could be entertaining without totally stomping all over the original (that is for the upcoming 2011 remake to do). For an example of a sequel totally raping the original, while watching the dark and visceral A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984) back in the day, did I ever once think to myself, “you know what this movie needs? A funny cameo by Tom Arnold and Rosanne Barr!” I don't fucking think so.
Set about 25 years after the original, the scanners project has continued with an amoral scientist, Dr. Morse (Tom Butler), creating a new version of ephemerol, called EPH-2. Because this is a sequel, the new drug comes in a spiffy little bottle complete with logo. The drug is not so much a scanner suppressant as in the original, but this time out is a hyper-addictive mind-control drug that causes user’s hair to fall out, skin to get blotchy and to mentally check out. Running the show is police commander Forrester (Yvan Ponton) with his sights, figuratively and literally, set on a seat of power. Enter David Kellum (David Hewlett), a rural farm boy who has come to the big city (unnamed, but obviously Canadian) to go to med school. Too bad he’s got some weird mental powers that cause him to freak out when listening to live music through headphones in industrial, underground diners! After getting involved with a rather aggressive co-ed, Kellum is nabbed by the baddies who want him to be their uber-soldier to help “fight crime” and bring about a “new order”. In fact he’s just being manipulated into helping Forrester achieve his bloody ambitions to rule the city with an army of scanners.
While the movie starts with a bang and the final 45 minutes are fun, the final scenes are really anti-climactic and it sorely lacks in the middle. In the opening scenes of the project’s first success case, Peter Drak (Raoul Trujillo), going berserk in an arcade (scanners apparently suck at Operation Wolf), causing the senseless slaughter of dozens of innocent games, and making me wonder if I didn't miss the scene where he cut off someone's head, because obviously he must be experiencing the quickening (“der kin be onlee a couple”). I'm guessing this is actually supposed to be echoing the end of the first film where Vale gets inside the computers with his mind... but in the way a true cheeseball sequel would do it. After his microchip massacre, Drak then flees the scene, hiding out in a mannequin warehouse where he freaks the hell out because he thinks the stiffs are talking to him; to a mannequin head with a wig on it (shades of Lustig’s MANIAC [1980]) he shouts “You aren't allowed to talk to me!” At the same time he is being hunted down by scanners with tranquilizer guns who are going to capture him for Dr. Morse's experiments. This whole sequence is really damned entertaining and well shot with lots of light and shadow and does a nice job of setting the tone for a cheesy sequel. At this point the movie is a great exploitation flcik… then the plot kicks in.
While Cronenberg always had a focused, high-brow thought process behind his films mixed with a delight in exploitation trappings, he was never really much for getting the best performances out of his cast. Sometimes it seems he gets lucky (James Woods and Patrick Magoohan are two examples of actors who need no hand-holding), but other times not so much.
Here, the plot really isn’t so bad, but keeping in Cronenberg tradition Hewlett is no great sweeps as an actor. Granted he is leagues ahead of the appropriately named Steven Lack (Cameron Vale in part one), who Cronenberg admits he cast solely because of his ice-blue eyes. Even so, his rather bland, adenoidal performance makes for some tedious scenes of character development (and a rather hilarious scene in which the exotic, stylish Trujillo calls Hewlett, who looks like Quentin Tarantino's long lost and less annoying brother, a “pretty boy”). The scenes between Kellum and love-interest Alice (Isabelle Mejias) are mercifully free of the ravages of chemistry and charisma. Some of the scenes are simply laughable, such as the scenes in which Alice is, in true soap-opera fashion, hospitalized for a couple of days for a concussion that she received from being bitch-slapped by a villain during a convenience store robbery (that Kellum foils in a satisfyingly messy way)! The weepy drama that ensues when Kellum visits her in the hospital is hilariously inane. Even worse are the fumbling attempts at social commentary in a few subplots, one involving the poisoning of milk, causing numerous infant deaths and scenes where Kellum and Alice are working for a lab that does animal experiments on cute, fluffy puppies – oh noeeesss!
While Cronenberg himself may not sport the greatest acting, he always makes up for it in other ways and in SCANNERS, he never makes the cardinal sin of bookending the drama with action. SCANNERS has a very organic rhythm, plot/character development, action, plot/character development, action, plot/character development, action; like a beating pulse. Screenwriter B.J. Nelson (of LONE WOLF MCQUIAD [1983] fame) would have done better to emulate this in addition to the psychic concept.
Once the plot proper starts rolling again, we find out what exactly Forrester’s machinations are, things start kicking into gear and we get back into the groove. Political assassination, scanner drug dealers, guys with shotguns, countless bloody noses, the discovery of Kellum’s scanner sister (Deborah Raffin) and a revolt against the “New Order” complete with creatively violent demises make this movie a lot of fun. Even Tom Harvey (the inspector from STRANGE BREW [1983]), shows up as the police cheif, one of Forrester’s road-blocks that must be disposed of. If the middle of the film didn’t drag so much and the leads had some sort of personality, this would be a great little piece of schlock.
While this movie definitely had its high points and it's low points, apparently it was such a huge hit in Sweden, that the distributors contacted Pierre David and demanded another sequel, this time would they get a blockbuster or a franchise killer? SCANNERS III... NEXT!
As you can tell from our previous post, Charles Band's PARASITE (1982) is a film that gets our juices flowing here at VJ. So imagine our infinite sadness when Band announced a sequel to be shot for his newly founded Empire Pictures in 1983/84 that never materialized.
"The Terror Continues..." promises the tagline and the credits on the poster definitely seem to indicate that. Robert Glaudini was listed as returning as parasitic researcher Dr. Paul Dean. Chances are Demi Moore wouldn't be back as she was beginning her Hollywood climb in flicks like BLAME IT ON RIO (1984) and NO SMALL AFFAIR (1984). The same three scripters who wrote the original film were listed as providing this screenplay. The artwork and tiny plot-pitch line ("27 floors of living, creeping, shocking 3-D") seem to indicate that Dean would return to the fabled futuristic cities of the original and most likely confront the parasite in a high-rise. It is like "DIE HARD with parasites" years before DIE HARD. Parasites loose in a high-rise. Ah, what could have been. Hey, wait a second, that is David Cronenberg's SHIVERS (1977; aka THE PARASITE MURDERS)!
Sadly, this never made it to the proposed shooting date of August. Too bad as I'm sure it would have been at least entertaining and feature gooey monster effects. Band instead gave us sci-fi/horror omnibus THE DUNGEONMASTER (1984; aka RAGEWAR). It was all too common for announced Band projects to never materialize. For more in-depth info on other unfilmed Band productions (both Empire and Full Moon), check out The Tomb, a fantastic resource of all things unmade Band (warning: lots of flicks about tiny monsters/aliens).
…1992 looks a lot like 1982, if the entirety of 1982 took place in the California desert.
…we still have gas pumps but they will have cool acrylic pyramids on them!
…the last person you want having your back in a brawl is Demi "Can't take a punch" Moore.
…"We got canned fruit, canned beer and canned soup", but at least it all costs the same.
…gangs called The Ray Guns will actually be taken seriously.
…if someone’s carrying around a thermos, there must be something extremely valuable in it!
…Jeff Goldbum and Ray Romano make sweet love and give birth to Robert Glaudini.
...Glaudini has only enough fight in him to take out two punks in the opening. After that, he is useless.
...Glaudini gets the girl despite showing he is filled with strawberry jam.
…don't go sticking your hand into a crazy, sick dude’s thermos!
...parasites can be killed with ultra-high frequency sound but you need the bigger parasite to identify the frequency of the smaller one inside you (do whaaaaat?).
…kids get sent to work camps run by corporations… Yeah, nothing has changed.
…gas prices have only gone up 2000%, but they don’t take cash, here in the wasteland they only accept Merchant Silver Cards. They’re everywhere, you don’t want to be.
…instant coffee will be referred to as “the real thing” and packets will fetch big money, at least $5 each!
…sickies get their kicks by pretending to rape their chicks and an abandoned kitchen is a perfect place for an S&M three-way!
…Demi Moore still can’t act.
…rattlesnakes are never up to any good. Ever.
…Lamborghini Countachs still look futuristic.
…you can stick a pole through someone and blood will still come out the end of it.
…corporate executives/assassins can appreciate good lemonade, but prefer not to drink it.
…laboratory-created parasites enjoy leaping down on their victims from the ceiling.
...if you're going to beat Demi Moore's ass, at least have the decency to take her outside and do it in the lemon garden.
Stephen King has billions of books in print and a gazillion dollars. Yet all of this success couldn't prepare him for the world of movie making. In the mid-1980s King decided to step behind the camera to finally do his written work justice. The end result? MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE (1986), a film so goofy that it could only have been made by Stephen King. But don't get me wrong, MAX-O has so many redeeming qualities (car stunts, over-the-top deaths, killer arcades, AC/DC score, Pat Hingle's nose) that it is a joy to sit through for me. The US movie going public circa 1986? Not so much. Of the 36 Stephen King adaptations/cash ins given wide theatrical releases, this one came in 33rd in terms of box office gross. Who made who indeed!
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