Stephen King famously hates pretty much all film adaptations of his stories, so it was an incongruous choice he made to direct this bizarre, low-brow, comedy that hardly seems befitting of him. Certainly, if you were going to look at all the films of Stephen King stories, you would be hard pressed to view this as one of the great ones.
That being said, it’s a funny film with a catchy soundtrack by AC/DC. The basic premise is a comet passing by Earth causes machines to become sentient and go on a rampage (though no explanation is given as to why the machines hate humans). A group of individuals get stranded at a remote gas station / rest stop and pit their wits against the , seemingly led by a sinister looking truck with a giant joker face on its hood.
The film follows in the mould of Smokey And The Bandit by portraying people from the Southern states as being dim-witted and casually sexist and rascist (but these tropes were prevalent in many 80s films). Indeed, Jackie Gleason showing up as Buford T. Justice would not seem out of place here.
Unlike many of its peers of that era, it surprisingly doesn’t feature nudity, which is a rarity for 80s R rated films. It does of course feature profanity and violence but it’s not really much of a horror film in the vein of films like The Thing; there aren’t monsters, jump scares or creepy prosthetic makeup effects that characterize pre-CGI films. Instead there is a lot truck and car destruction. I’d go as far as calling it a smash’em up
It’s a loud, stupid, action comedy that features lots of memorable dialogue and scenes. Stephen King disowned it, but I think it’s under-rated and highly enjoyable and fun.
Honey, come on over here, sugarbuns. This machine just called me an asshole.