Maximum Underdrive

I will never try to convince anyone that Maximum Overdrive is a good movie, but I will also never waver in my undying, unreasonable, and eternal adoration for all that it is.

You could torture me. You could reason with me. You could tie me to a hard chair and invite Stephen King himself to stand there lecturing me as to why it's a terrible film, all the while poking me with a hot cattle prod. Heck, you could have Stephen King force feed me raw onions while he uses a creepy ventriloquist dummy to explain why Maximum Overdrive is not in any way good, and you know what? I will not give in.

I love it.

The idea that someone else decided to adapt King's story or remake this movie was, quite obviously, extremely exciting for me to learn, despite the fact that all who had seen it testified that it was not worth my time. I was prepared to walk away and remove it from my radar because really, if I need to see pinball machines electrocuting Gus Fring, I could quite easily put in my well-worn Maximum Overdrive DVD any day of the week (or every day of the week). When it popped up as a free stream on Amazon Prime, I found myself gravitating back towards this by all accounts waste of time. When I saw this tagline:

I knew there was no escaping it. I had to watch Trucks. No ventriloquist dummy could convince me otherwise.

Quick Plot: At a dusty rest stop far away from civilization, a few scattered and unhappy white people begin to notice that trucks are developing a violent mind of their own, possibly due to a fuzzily explained nearby toxic waste accident. Tragically, there is no mention of comets or lasers. 

Our scruffy survivors include Demon Knight's Brenda Bakke as an independent trail guide, a widowed mechanic dad and his teenage son, a divorced white collar dad and his terribly awful teenage daughter, an aging hippie, elderly clerk, and a few jerks in trucker hats who I think are supposed to be villainous but honestly, I never cared enough to know for sure. 

Made in Canada on a TV movie budget, Trucks is certainly a passable horror movie filled with a few genuinely fun and wacky sequences. The acting is more than acceptable, and the special effects budget clearly included generous donations from someone who just really liked to blow things up. Heck, in many ways, this is probably a much "better" movie than Maximum Overdrive.

But I have no desire to ever see it again.

Ever play an unbranded board game modeled on a far more famous one? The dollar store's version of Monopoly (perhaps named "Moneypoley" or "Real Estate Game"), for example? It's structured the same as Parker Brothers' pride and joy, but there's just something missing. Maybe the paper money is printed on thinner stock or the dice have stickers in place of carved dots. It's fine, and if you gave it to a child raised in a Skinner box who had never fought with his brother over who got to be the thimble, that child would enjoy it with no complaint. But it's just not real.

Even with maximum explosions.

That's kind of how I felt about Trucks. Its credits announce it as being based on Stephen King's short story (which I haven't read), and it never pretends to be a remake of 1987's AC/DC scored cocaine-fueled classic. This is a somewhat seriously told tale of trucks gone bad. Yes, it is very hard to tell such a tale seriously, even in the hands of Visiting Hours screenwriter Brian Taggert.

There are touches of fun, to be sure. A scene wherein a motorized toy pickup truck terrorizes a mailman is rather adorable. There's also a very neat sequence where a HAZMAT suit is inflated by a cleanup crew car, only to animate in such a way where it essentially becomes an invisible man axe murderer. These are good things.

But U-Turn, U-Die good? Not nearly. 

Trucks just isn't that much fun. The humans aren't colorful enough to sustain our attention and the actual trucks lack any defining feature to give a memorable face to the evil. By late ‘90s direct-to-video (or Canadian television?) standards, it’s fine. 

Just not soda-can-to-the-groin fine.

High Points

Look, I really DID enjoy the aforementioned kills for their surprise...

Low Points

Even if the inconsistency of what machinery acts evil and what doesn't remains an issue for a purist like me

Lessons Learned

Kids of the '90s firmly believe turquoise and silver should be worn separately or banned

When you're stressed, it's good to meditate

You can't be a redneck if you're from Detroit

Rent/Bury/Buy

Trucks is streaming on Amazon Prime and probably lurking somewhere in its entirety on youtube. It’s not the worst way to kill 90 minutes, particularly if you have any affection for tiny mechanical Tonkas braining a U.S. postal employee. It won’t inspire a LEGO set,  but you know honeybun, what can?

Damn straight.

The Harrington Kind

Don’t you love discovering entire filmographies of good directors you never knew anything about? A few weeks ago, I enjoyed a double feature of Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? and What’s the Matter With Helen?, two “Grand Dame Guignol” flicks by Curtis Harrington. Both were fairly fabulous, and not JUST because both featured Shelley Winters. Hence, it made perfect sense to continue the Harrington path.

Quick Plot: Gang rape!

What? Don’t look at me like that. It’s how the movie starts!

Terry (John Savage) is a somewhat unwilling participant who ends up in jail anyway. Two years later, the young musician returns home to his overbearing mother Thelma (Lady In a Cage’s Anne Sothern) and her boarding house filled with old women and a trouble-in-the-making wannabe model named Lori (a young Cindy Williams). Next door lives Louise (The Manipulator’s Luana Anders), a lush of a librarian harboring a crush on the able-bodied Terry.

What does a young man do after a few years in the joint? In 1973, the answer was ‘clean pools and dodge the advances of middle aged women.’ 

See, Terry is an attractive but confused kid with the kind of childhood Freud would throw an ice cream social to discuss. His unusual upbringing by the single and daffy Thelma (whom he never refers to as Mom) has left him with more than a few issues regarding the opposite sex, particularly those with a few decades over him. 

When Mom--er, Thelma--tosses out a comment about how Terry’s rape(ish) victim should be run off the road, he takes it upon himself to do just that. After all, a boy’s best friend is his mother so far as movies have thus far taught me.

The Killing Kind is a strange film, one more designed as a sort of character study than plot-heavy horror. Though the mood is much darker than the other Harrington films I’ve seen, it’s clearly right in step with his oeuvre. Once again, we have the frays of a mother/son relationship leading to violence (a la Helen), oddly toned humor (a la Roo), and a bevy of middle aged women with plenty of juice left. There’s almost something vaguely Pedro Almovodar-esque in Harrington’s fascination with certain themes of sexuality, repression, and mismanaged parenting. Nowhere is this more evident than in The Killing Kind’s ending (no spoilers, chill out) where we finally see just how devastating an unchecked inappropriate mother/son relationship can be.

High Points

Sothern’s complicated blousiness and Savage’s understated awkwardness go a long way to crafting the complicated, sad, and more than unhealthy bond between mother and son

Holy ‘70s home design! Busy wallpaper! Shag carpeting! Shag couches! Shag haircuts! The Killing Kind is kind of a visual feast!

Low Points

Look, we get that Terry’s sexual nature is all messed up due to Thelma’s overmothering, but a dream sequence where he’s dressed like a baby while lying next to a naked Lori as a batch of older women point their fingers and cry “Shame!” is a bit obvious, no?

Lessons Learned

If someone tells you that you have an interesting face, it really just means that you’re not pretty

When peeping, leave the pets at home

Everybody spends time behind bars these days

Too Close To Home Alert

It’s a tad discomforting to watch a film about a crazy cat lady while one of your own felines sleeps on your knees and the other has wrapped herself around the back of your neck in the adorable boa style she so enjoys

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Killing Kind is something different, a ‘70s study in sexual dysfunction with some gutsy performances and black humor. It has its flaws, but much like the similarly underseen and underdiscussed Visiting Hours, it also makes for a fairly fascinating character study of a psychologically damaged killer. The DVD includes an informative interview with Curtis Harrington who has some old school stories of Paramount backlots and how his friendship with the likes of Kenneth Anger helped to get him recognized as someone worth bankrolling. I don’t know that The Killing Kind is worth a blind buy, but it’s certainly something different and fit for a thoughtful rental. 

Just not when you’re feeling overly sensitive about being a cat lady.

Michael Ironside Can Visit Me Any Hour

Why does MIchael Ironside headline so few films? 

Why does Michael Ironside wear women's makeup in so few films?

Why does Michael Ironside wear a pleather tank top in so few films?

Why is this world such a poorly managed place?

Quick Plot: A feminist newswoman named Deborah (Lee Grant) earns some press when she grills the lawyer who prosecuted a battered wife who killed her abusive husband. Later that evening, Deborah comes home to find a shirtless Michael Ironside wearing her costume jewelry and waving a knife over her heart. 

Deborah is sent to a general hospital and put in the care of Sheila, a single mother nurse who does double duty at a woman's shelter. What neither woman realizes is that Ironside's Colt is a serial killer who stalks and slays women that catch his interest.

Visiting Hours was once classified as a video nasty, which is irritatingly ridiculous. Watching it today, the actual violence is quite tame, leaving more to the imagination than you'd expect. Despite being about a raging misogynist who slaughters strong women, the film contains no nudity, hardly any gore, and carefully filmed violence that has far greater effect for not being exploitive. A pseudo-rape scene, for example, never lingers over the victim's body lecherously. It's a great exercise in restraint that makes Visiting Hours feel positively classy (not nasty). 

Okay, so there's this, but trust me!

The film was written by Brian Taggart, whose genre credits include a random assortment of television and films like The Spell, Omen IV, Poltergiest III, V, and the made-for-TV remake of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. Director Jean-Claude Lord has a long resume, though few (that I can tell) genre credits. It’s quite a shame, since Visiting Hours is indeed a uniquely well-crafted thriller that does almost everything right.

There's also something to admire about the strong female characters, not a trait you found readily in '80s killer thrillers. As Sheila, Linda Purl (probably better known to modern audiences as Pam Beesly's mom and Michael Scott's ex) conveys a realistic balance of likable innocense and common motherly sense. Sure, she probably shouldn't run home without that reluctant cop when she suspects a killer's playing house there, but you believe her earnestness at that point and become genuinely invested in her fate. Lee Grant's Deborah isn't a perfectly defined character (see Low Points) but she has a certain Dee Wallace-in-The-Howling quality that makes you respect this professional woman's dedication to her beliefs.

But the real star of Visiting Hours has Sides of Iron, and his contribution can't be underrated. The fact that he barely says two sentences in a row yet still conveys so much presence speaks strongly to Michael Ironside's performance, making the character's Energizer Bunny-like determination to assassinate his targets all the more powerful. 

 Also, he wears a pleather tanktop in one scene and an argyle sweater vest the next. Now THAT'S versatility!

High Points

I won't argue that I'm not biased--my love of Michael Ironside is legendary to listeners of Girls On Film--but I do objectively feel that he gives a superb performance. The man's face is obviously custom-made to this kind of role, but Ironside goes a step farther by making Colt both a sociopath and child of abuse. It's actually quite understated

This is an odd 'high point' to explain, but I shall try: the sexual aspect of Visiting Hours' violence is handled incredibly well. A lesser film would have used several chances to toss in a few boobs or worse, gone more conventionally brutal with the attacks. But that's not who Colt is. As we learn from his surviving victim, he's impotent and therefore not interested in the sexuality of his female victims, but in their strength. It's a much more complex topic than you typically see in a serial killer thriller, and I appreciated it.

Low Points

I understand that Deborah's main position as a political newscaster is anti-violence, but this quirk seems so shoe-horned in to make Visiting Hours end on a kind of Straw Dogs 'we're all killers' note that simply isn't necessary

Random AMC Pacer Alert!

The vehicle of choice for single mom nurses everywhere

Lessons Learned

Even crimped hair and hot pink high-waisted jeans aren't enough to arouse some men

Sleeping in the nude can be slightly inconvenient, especially if you're babysitting small children or expecting a serial killer to break in

Too much loose living causes gallstones 

Hospital pudding can be quite tasty, at least if you're William Shatner

Random Observation

When the subject of criminal sketch artists arises, I often find myself confused. I can't remember what color hair a person has, much less describe in detail where his or her cheekbones sit with enough accuracy to produce an accurate portrait. That being said, Michael Ironside has a pretty unique face and had any police department employee with a notebook and pencil asked, I imagine every female character in the film could have given a full-bodied driver's license photo!

Rent/Bury/Buy

It's a shame that Lord didn't make more genre films, as Visiting Hours is by far and away a cut above most of what I associate with this type of story. The characters are well-constructed by good writing and solid performances, making the plot twists believable even when they shouldn't be. The film is streaming on Netflix and has just received a long-delayed DVD release (on a dual disc with Bad Dreams, no less) so check it out if you enjoy a good cat-and-mouse hunt or if like me, you just enjoy Michael Ironside in pleather.