Editorials
Sorry ‘Doctor Sleep,’ But ‘Maximum Overdrive’ is Still the Best Stephen King Trailer!
Everyone loves a good Stephen King trailer, and the new preview for Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of Doctor Sleep is a great one. Atmospheric and spooky, with impressive recreations of Stanley Kubrick’s classic The Shining, the teaser gets audiences in the right frame of mind to remember something timeless, and get excited for something brand new.
And yet, as good as the trailer for Doctor Sleep is, it’s nothing compared to the teaser for Maximum Overdrive.
This a masterpiece of self-adulation, an ironic classic in its own right. Because as much as it boasts about the overwhelming terror that awaits you in Maximum Overdrive – a film about trucks that get possessed by aliens, lest we forget – we all know how this movie actually turned out. It may be awesome as hell, but it ain’t “scary.”
To fully appreciate the absolute marvel that is the Maximum Overdrive trailer, we are going to have to analyze it piece by piece, as though we have never seen it or the finished movie before.
First, imagine yourself in a movie theater in 1986.
By this point, Stephen King adaptations have been mostly excellent – with hits like Carrie, The Dead Zone, Christine and The Shining – and the announcement of a new one, which often came in the theater (since the internet and social media weren’t really a thing yet), would have come as a surprise.
The trailer begins with Stephen King himself, the best-selling horror author, standing in front of a giant Green Goblin head. Yes, that Green Goblin. The bad guy from the Spider-Man comics. Needless to say, it’s one hell of an image.
“Hello,” he says. “I’m Stephen King. I’ve written several motion pictures but I want to tell you about a movie called Maximum Overdrive, which is the first one I’ve directed.”
Ho. ly. Crap. Stephen King has directed his own horror movie. The master of horror has taken a seat behind the camera. This, we are expected to tell ourselves, is going to be the scariest movie of all time.
And somehow the Green Goblin is involved?
Well, don’t worry, because we’re about to see some of that terrifying footage. First, future Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul co-star Giancarlo Esposito gets killed by an exploding arcade cabinet, and then some guy gets a soda can shot into his testicles by a vending machine.
Uh-oh.
“A lot of people have directed Stephen King novels and stories,” King says, speaking about himself in the third person like that’s ever been a good sign. “And I finally decided if you want something done right you oughta do it yourself.”
Once again, just in case you’ve forgotten, that’s Stephen King throwing massive shade at Stanley Kubrick, David Cronenberg, Brian De Palma and John Carpenter, amongst others. He’s not just saying that the film he directed is going to be good, he’s calling some of the greatest horror directors in the history of the cinematic medium incompetent.
Cut to cars driving themselves through a front window of a diner! Cut to Yeardley Smith, the future voice of Lisa on The Simpsons, screaming in terror!
“It was my first picture as a director, and you know something?” King asks the audience, rhetorically, as he works himself up into a manic line reading. “I sort of enjoyed it!”
Oh man, he’s really worked up about directi… wait, “sort of?” He only “sort of” enjoyed it?
“WHAT IS GOING ON,” Yeardley Smith screams! “I DON’T KNOW,” yells her husband!
“I just wanted someone to do Stephen King right,” says Stephen King, who probably didn’t think too hard about that sentence. (Or worse, he thought about it a lot and he came to the conclusion that it didn’t sound weird or creepy, and not in the good way.)
Cut to Emilio Estevez shooting a rocket launcher at an alien truck, and then back to…
“So come and spend some time with me and my friends at the Dixie Boy,” King invites us. “Spend some time in the dark.”
And then, in the piece de resistance, King lifts his finger dramatically to the audience and declares, “I’m going to scare the hell outta you. And that’s a promise.”
“Jesus is comin’ and he is [OFF-SCREEN CAR HORN SOUND EFFECT],” Emilio Estevez announces, after a brief montage of mayhem.
God bless this trailer, this absurd, cocky, unconvincing, condescending trailer that dares to call The Shining, The Dead Zone, Carrie and Christine pieces of crap while trying to sell us on the idea that Maximum Overdrive – one of the most ridiculous (albeit ridiculously entertaining) – Stephen King adaptations is better than all of them.
Imagine if the Doctor Sleep trailer opened with director Mike Flanagan looking directly at the screen, in front of a giant image of Doctor Doom’s face for some reason, and calling Stanley Kubrick a punk for screwing up The Shining, then pointing his finger directly at the camera and daring you to see his new film.
That would be absurd. It would also be the biggest flex ever, and it would also be exactly what Stephen King did (if you exchange Green Goblin for Doctor Doom, of course).
They don’t make trailers like the one for Maximum Overdrive anymore. They didn’t even really make them at the time. It was a colossal marketing power play, a gamble that audiences would flock to anything – even the goofiest Stephen King movie ever – so long as they knew that King himself was in charge. And they were somehow guaranteed to think it was the scariest movie ever, despite oodles of footage in that exact same trailer which pretty much proved otherwise.
Maximum Overdrive is, for the record, a cult classic, and a beloved film amongst many King fans specifically because the author took a big swing, made something bonkers, and never directed again. But to say it lived up to its own hype would be a huge overstatement. And that hype gushes from this trailer in waves.
So enjoy that Doctor Sleep trailer if you must. Just know that if you want something done right, you oughta do it yourself, and put a big ol’ groin attack in your trailer to prove it.
The problem with filming sequels back-to-back is that, unless you can afford expensive reshoots, there’s no easy way to adjust course in between movies if fans react badly to where the story is headed. That’s why it’s important to have a complete narrative thought out well in advance lest you accidentally kill a budding franchise.
However, this isn’t always the case. Every once in a while, it seems like the cinema gods smile upon certain chaotic productions and gift moviegoers with complete franchises that feel like more than the sum of their hastily produced parts. Ted Nicolaou’s Bloodlust: Subspecies III is precisely one of these miraculous pictures, with the raw talents of the artists involved (as well as the continued support from Romania) turning the feature into an effective conclusion for a series that kind of made things up as the filmmakers went along.
That’s why I’d like to invite my fellow readers to join me on this third part of our journey through the Subspecies franchise as we look into Bloodlust and talk about how it remains a surprisingly satisfying finale to the original trilogy.
A Trilogy Planned on the Fly
Released only a year after Bloodstone found plenty of success in rental stores and mail-in VHS catalogues worldwide, 1994’s Bloodlust was produced at the same time as its predecessor in (mostly) the same locations and with the same team. This means that the movie benefited from all the same upgrades as Bloodstone, with the crew now being more experienced with the ins and outs of surviving a low-budget Romanian production and the cast really settling into their characters.
At this point, everything from location scouting to the makeup process had been streamlined, with Wayne Toth and Norman Cabrera, the main duo behind special effects, even switching out time-consuming prosthetics for latex gloves in order to speed up Anders Hove’s monstrous transformation. The titular “subspecies” demons were also once again relegated to a mere cameo appearance due to the laborious puppetry required to bring them to life.
The only real hiccup came from the fact that actress Denice Duff had replaced the first film’s Michelle (Laura Mae Tate) and was immediately expected to portray the character as both an innocent victim in part II and as a secondary villain in part III. According to behind-the-scenes interviews, the hectic production schedule that blended two different movies meant that Duff would often find herself having to alternate between two incredibly different versions of Michelle during the same shooting day – though it’s obvious that she’s having more fun with Bloodlust’s more traditionally vampiric version of her character.
In the finished film, we pick things up immediately where the previous entry left off as Rebecca (Melanie Shatner) is forced to leave her vampire sister Michelle (Duff) behind in the dungeons of Castle Vladislav due to the rising sun. This allows Mummy (Pamela Gordon) to use Michelle’s blood to revive the vicious Radu (Hove) so that he may continue his quest for the coveted Bloodstone – a magical artifact that perpetually drips the Blood of Saints.
Meanwhile, the dreamy US embassy agent Mel (Kevin Blair) agrees to help Rebecca plan a rescue mission, though they’re unaware that Radu has become infatuated with Michelle during his attempts to guide her growing bloodlust. This all culminates in a climactic confrontation meant to tie up all of the series’ loose ends in one of Full Moon Pictures’ most ambitious productions.
The Evolution of Radu
Like its predecessor, Bloodlust: Subspecies III was also warmly received by fans who argued that the series was an even bigger success than Full Moon’s other major horror franchise, Puppet Master. This praise wasn’t unanimous, however, as 1994 had seen the rise of a more modern breed of sexy vampire popularized by Anne Rice, with old-school Nosferatu like Radu being viewed as obsolete when compared to the likes of Lestat and Gary Oldman’s take on Dracula.
In a way, one might argue that Nicolaou’s film is something of a swan song for the classic vampire story, as Bloodlust combines all of the traditional elements we tend to associate with these tales into a single tragic yarn that ties a neat little bow on Radu’s story as well as the old-fashioned monster movies that he represents. The finale remains shocking despite the fact that this is the third time we see Radu get brutally killed onscreen, with the brief tease that he may one day return feeling more like a nod towards the nature of evil rather than sequel bait.
The film dabbles a bit in gothic romance and even explores the inherent power fantasy behind transforming into an immortal creature of the night, but the filmmakers never lose sight of Radu as a demonic force even when he’s willing to betray his beloved Mummy for Michelle’s sake. In fact, his twisted “love” for his fledgling makes him even creepier as we get the feeling that his passion comes from a dark and disturbing place.
Anders Hove is at his absolute best in this film, with the effects department boosting his moments of what the younger generation would call “aura farming” whenever Radu emerges from shadows like a 90s version of Count Orlok. There are even a couple of surprisingly effective jump-scares here, which is why I’d argue that Bloodlust cements Radu as one of the most memorable cinematic vampires of all time despite his humble origins.
Subspecies Saves Its Best For Last
Nicolaou and Vlad Panescu also saved the best for “last” (more on that in a bit) regarding the film’s visuals, with the cinematography and overall atmosphere of Bloodlust absolutely surpassing what we saw in the previous films. Everything feels appropriately climactic this time around (including the wonderful soundtrack that was co-composed alongside an authentic Romanian orchestra), and I appreciate how this is the fastest-paced entry in the trilogy since the film doesn’t need to waste time setting anything up.
Bloodlust still suffers from some of the same low-budget blemishes as its predecessors, but there’s so much creative passion here that no amount of wonky effects work or stilted dialogue can get in the way of appreciating the flick’s gothic grandeur. That’s why it’s not surprising that the movie’s definitive(-ish) ending would later be retconned as fans begged for more Radu.
Of course, the next entry in this series would be a different kind of vampiric endeavor altogether, with the filmmakers attempting to engage with the same trends that ultimately killed Radu and his antiquated kin. That, however, is a story for another time. For now, I’ll merely insist that Bloodlust: Subspecies III remains a highlight of Full Moon’s expansive catalogue and is definitely worth seeking out today.
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