Trucks (1997)

That was an excellent one.

Excellent adaptation.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Practically throughout half of the film, I kept on wondering why that imbecilic ginger head of the lead actor looked so damn familiar. And then suddenly, maybe because he pulled a particularly stupid facial expression or something, it just hit me! It's Arnold Pointdexter from the original "Revenge of the Nerds"! You know, the guy with the enormous curly hairdo and glasses as thick as strawberry jelly jars! Apparently he also appeared in a trillion of lousy TV-series, but since I never watched any of those, he's still just Pointdexter to me. I mean, this already should give you some sort of indication of this movie's quality level, no? "Trucks" is a TV-remake of the only (not very successful) horror movie that its author Stephen King directed himself, about a bunch of lifeless trucks in the Area 51 region going berserk without apparent reason, and the fate of humanity lies in the incompetent hands of the ginger artist formerly known as Arnold Pointdexter the nerd! Indeed, "Trucks" is a pretty bad film, but at the same time it also has to be said that it's a tremendously FUN bad film! Like many of the other reviewers have already pointed out, director Chris Thomson and writer Brian Taggart (usually a quite reliable choice) totally didn't grab all the great opportunities you get with murderous wheels! The whole film simply features a handful of trucks, and only one of them is a genuinely impressive eighteen-wheeler. Instead of bombastic machines, the script somehow prefers to generate horror situations through remote-controlled toy trucks and even self-inflatable safety suits. Needless to say these sequences look quite ridiculous and completely sucks out all the scary potential of the basic concept. I must admit, however, that I was pleasantly surprised with the body count and even the amount of gore and bloodshed in "Trucks", especially considering the fact it's a made-for- TV effort. The characters are hopelessly stereotypical; your average assembly of local yokels, reluctant tourists and troubled teenagers. Their acting performances are quite poor, though I have a weakness for the stunning Brenda Bakke. She's a genuine 90's beauty and I never really understood why her career didn't skyrocket. The ending is relatively decent, even though you can see it coming from fifty miles away.

The biggest problem I have with some of Stephen King's stories is their complete lack of logic. It's as though he was getting paid by the word so he just made up situations without thinking about the reasons behind them."Trucks" is just such a story. It seems that all of a sudden the trucks in a town near Area 51 become animated and drive around on their own, stalking and killing humans. But why do they do it? We never seem to get a clear answer. It could be because of a toxic spill that they drove through, or it could be because they're occupied by an alien life force from a meteor or maybe they just got tired of being pushed around by all those redneck truckers.Whatever the reason, they can not only engage their own engines, but apparently shift their own gears, operate their own side-view mirrors and assorted latches, turn on their own headlights, and eventually learn to talk to each other by honking their own horns. They drive around in circles in a parking lot, holding a bunch of earthlings hostage in a luncheonette in the middle of the desert. But why? And if these trucks are that intent on destroying mankind, why don't they just drive into the building and be done with it and then move on to the next place? As far as the characters go, I was rooting for the trucks to do away with a few of them right off the bat, like the redneck trucker who stood around scratching his crotch. And then there was the King standby, the bratty, rebellious kid who didn't want to be there and did nothing but spout sarcastic comments for the first 40 minutes of the movie. But most of all I would love to have seen that 50-year-old hippie under at least eight of the semi's sixteen wheels. For someone who supposedly lived his life according to the "peace, love, and music" philosophy, it seems he embraced the establishment often enough over the past thirty years to swallow more than a few Big Macs along with his brown rice.I was confused as to why it was just trucks that were affected by this evil phenomenon, whatever it was; why not regular cars and lawn mowers and RVs too? And who was it who determined that the tractor-trailer should be the "leader of the pack"? And if helicopters were involved, why did it take so long for one to show up? Why didn't "Boss Semi" -- who was some sort of four-stroke Rasputin and kept on truckin' even after being blown up and burned to a crisp -- call him in long before the end? I'll bet the actors were told this movie was going to be the next "The Birds"; all I can say is that this movie was for the birds.

TRUCKS was made just over a decade after MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE. Now, most remakes seem pointless. But this is an exception. It definitely has a purpose.It reminds us just how much nasty fun MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE was.This was made with a small budget, so the special effects consist primarily of huge trucks driving in circles and honking their horns.The original film had so many nifty touches. Writer/Director Stephen King had a great cameo as a bewildered bank customer confronted with a foul mouthed ATM. A Little League team was attacked by a bulldozer and the Soda Machine of Death. People at home and at work were attacked by electric knives, hairdryers, lawnmowers and Walkmen. There was that great scene of a boy riding his bike down a suburban street: as he progresses along the street, sprinklers come on in the yards as if some unseen force was following him. There was that hard rocking musical score by AC/DC. Capping this off was the 'chief' truck with its Green Goblin emblem.This is just dull and flat. Every once in a while one of the actors comes out of a stupor, gets up from a chair and walks out the door to be killed.No reason is given for the attacks. We have mention of Area 51, aliens, toxic gas and a meteor shower.And the ending is a cheat. The four surviving characters are picked up by a helicopter, which turns out to be pilot-less as it has been possessed by whatever force infected the trucks. Gotta leave a door open for a sequel, I guess.More inexplicably, some very good actors are stuck in this. Hey, they have to eat. And they got a trip to Canada.Skip this. Go rent MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE.

Trucks! "U-Turn U-Die!" More like "U-CRAP U-WORSE THAN 2FAST 2FURIOUS" If you watch this film you will want to shoot the television. If you are a Steven king fan you will want to shoot the television and shoot the producer. If you like the story however, you will still hate this movie. One could say that it is not a bad movie, in the same way Hitler was fond of fluffy kittens and donating to charity. This film is terrible, but it has one strong point, it has the temptation no other crappy horror film that i have ever seen has. It makes you want to keep wasting it. Hit it with an axe. Time and time again and you will never get bored.