The only movie ever directed by Stephen King to stream for free

Stephen King wrote more than 60 novels and countless short stories, but he directed only one film: “Maximum Overdrive,” which was released in theaters in 1986. Starring Emilio Estevez as chef/ex-con Bill Robinson, the film asks the question we’ve all wondered at some point: “What if machines came back to life and started killing people?” One character is killed by a vending machine that shoots a soda can at him, while a child is flattened by a sentient roller. It’s all reminiscent of that one scene in the 2007 movie “Transformers” where the Allspark cube brings the surrounding machine to life, except in “Maximum Overdrive,” that 20-second sequence is the entire movie.

If you want to watch “Maximum Overdrive,” you can do so now on Tubi, a free streaming service where you pay to watch ads. You can also watch it on The Roku Channel or Pluto TV, and if you want to skip the ads, you can pay $3.99 on services like Google Play Movies or Apple TV+. You can also get a free trial of MovieSphere+ on Amazon and watch it there. While some older films are almost impossible to watch today (you’d have to jump through a million hurdles to get a legal copy of the film, for example). David Lynch’s masterpiece “Wild at Heart”), there is no shortage of easy ways to check “maximum speed”.

Why is “Maximum Overdrive” so easy to watch? Well, the main reason is that the movie is… not very good.

The “speed limit” contains Rotten tomatoes score of only 14% and IMDb Rating 5.4/10. This last result isn’t actually that bad, especially considering this IMDb’s well-documented bias against the horror genrebut the most damning classification It came from Stephen King himself. He explained in an interview for the book in 2003: “The problem with this film is that I was out of my mind the whole time it was being made, and I didn’t really know what I was doing. However, I learned a lot from the experience, and I would like to try directing again at some point.” “Stephen King’s Hollywood” by Tony Magistral.

Sadly, King has not directed another film since. While failure may be the best teacher when it comes to learning a skill, over time, King seemed to come to regard Speed ​​Limit as a failure to the point where the only lesson was to never coach it again. It might have been better for him to continue writing it, as he would have an intuitive understanding of how to write and pace each scene. As an author, King has a gift for understanding how and when to delve into a character’s perspective or describe things clearly while staying true to the character’s personality. Meanwhile, King as a director seemed to be throbbing 24/7. As production assistant Chip Hacker once explained:

“Stephen King had a very strong idea for a movie, but he wasn’t able to translate it into pictures, you know what I mean? I think writing and directing are two completely different talents, and it’s hard to be good at one.”