Maximum Overdrive

Possibly no contemporary author has ever been as abused by the movies as Stephen King has, though this time he has no one to blame but himself. The plot hinges on a comet passing near the Earth and mysteriously turning some (but not all) machines into mad killers. At the Dixie Boy truck stop, several semis besiege the patrons and staff, including manager Hendershot (Pat Hingle), former college boy and prison parolee Bill Robinson (Emilio Estevez), tough-but-sweet hitchhiker Brett (Laura Harrington), ditzy redneck newlyweds Curt and Wanda June (John Short and Ellen McElduff), and about a dozen others whose only plot function is to act scared then become victims. At ...