Cover Art

Credits

Director: Stephen King Starring: Emilio Estevez, Pat Hingle, Laura Harrington, Yeardley Smith, John Short Screenplay: Stephen King Music: AC/DC Tagline: Who made who? Country: USA

The story is pretty straightforward and tells of a period of time when the earth is within the tail of a comet. This phenomenon apparently causes all the electrical devices to take on a murderous life of their own. A sports coach is battered to death by Coke cans which start popping out of the vending machine at high velocity; a woman is cut by an electric carving knife; a drawbridge is raised whilst people are still driving across it causing untold death and destruction as the vehicles, and passengers, start sliding ever downwards. Then there are the vehicles themselves, the real stars of this film, that become autonomous; taking on a diabolical life of their own.

Once the scene has been set, the central story focuses on a service station where there is a motley assortment of characters who find themselves under siege from the driverless trucks. The fight is on for survival and it becomes a battle of wits between the trucks and the humans. This group, led by a steely-faced Billy Robinson (Emilio Estevez), an ex-con, try to figure out what is going on and how to escape to safety. You can pretty much predict that they do manage to outwit their mechanical opponents and they are able to make their getaway on a boat.

To be honest, this is not really a great film by any means and King's rather unimaginative direction does nothing to enhance the film. King seems strangely uninspired in making this film, which is odd considering the vast imagination that he pours onto the written page. Nonetheless, this is fairly enjoyable and entertaining – full of clichés and bad dialogue (another weird thing considering that King is a virtuoso with the written word) and some reasonably impressive FX work.