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TRUCKS
Rating:  ½
Canada/USA. 1997.
Director – Chris Thomson, Screenplay – Brian Taggert, Based on the Short Story by Stephen King, Producer – Derek Mazur, Photography – Ron Draper, Music – Michael Richard Plowman, Digital Visual Effects – Rainmaker Imaging, Special Effects Supervisor – Rory P.M. Cutler, Production Design – David Ferguson. Production Company – Trimark Pictures/Leider-Reisberg/Credo Entertainment.
Cast:
Timothy Busfield (Ray Porter), Brenda Bakke (Hope Gladstone), Brendan Fletcher (Logan Porter), Jay Brazeau (Jack), Amy Stewart (Abby), Roman Podhora (Thad), Victor Cowie (George), Sharon Bajer (June Yeager), Aidan Devine (Bob), Rick Skene (Pete), Jonathan Barrett (Brad Yeager)
Plot: In the area around the Lunar truckstop, trucks suddenly start coming to life, driving themselves and pursuing people with lethal intent. A group of locals and travelers are imprisoned inside the truckstop diner, where they plot various means of escape from the prowling trucks outside. It is theorized that the trucks could have been activated by debris from a passing comet or military experiments at the nearby Area 51.
Trucks is a cable tv movie adapted from Stephen King’s 1973 short story of the same name. King himself previously adapted the story in his one and only directorial outing, Maximum Overdrive (1986). This was widely regarded as a flop so exactly why the story was remade here is a mystery. Although at least it makes artistic sense – remaking a classic is an act of hubris, the assumption you can improve on it, the need to stamp new authorial signature over the material audiences hold in high regard, whereas the idea of perfecting a work that flopped the first time around makes much greater sense. And that’s exactly what Trucks does – it aims far more modestly than Maximum Overdrive did and succeeds quite admirably.
While in Maximum Overdrive, Stephen King pumped the original story out with malevolent soda machines, drawbridges, goblin trucks and had humanity fighting back with rocket launchers, Trucks is far more modestly contained and faithful to the story. The story was set around the location of the diner and the film for the greater part keeps it there, creating a tight bottleneck situation and suspensefully compounding it. Director Chris Thomson builds a lot of quite effective foreboding out of trucks cruising the wide-open Winnipeg prairie landscapes, creeping up behind people as they cross a lot, or just eerily sitting idling in the middle of the road. There’s one particularly gripping sequence with Timothy Busfield trying to get the two teenagers out from a pipe while an idling truck lies parked over the mouth of it. The characterizations are effectively drawn, although Brenda Bakke looks frustrated and a little out of place playing a country girl.
The only major addition to the story is a trendy dash of X Files/Area 51 government coverup UFO conspiracy, which seems a little flimsy as explanation – the piece works much better as in Stephen King’s story, and its clear model Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963), without the need for any explanation. The ending contains an effective twist surprise.
Other Stephen King genre adaptations include:- Carrie (1976), Salem’s Lot (1979), The Shining (1980), Christine (1983), Cujo (1983), The Dead Zone (1983), Children of the Corn (1984), Firestarter (1997), Cat’s Eye (1985), Silver Bullet (1985), The Running Man (1987), Pet Semetary (1989), Graveyard Shift (1990), It (tv mini-series, 1990), Misery (1990), a segment of Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990), Sometimes They Come Back (1991), The Lawnmower Man (1992), The Dark Half (1993), Needful Things (1993), The Tommyknockers (tv mini-series, 1993), The Stand (tv mini-series, 1994), The Langoliers (tv mini-series, 1995), The Mangler (1995), Thinner (1996), The Night Flier (1997), Quicksilver Highway (1997), The Shining (tv mini-series, 1997), Apt Pupil (1998), The Green Mile (1999), Hearts in Atlantis (2001), Carrie (tv mini-series, 2002), Dreamcatcher (2003), Riding the Bullet (2004), ‘Salem’s Lot (tv mini-series, 2004), Secret Window (2004), Desperation (tv mini-series, 2006), Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King (tv mini-series, 2006), 1408 (2007) and The Mist (2007). Stephen King had also written a number of original screen works with Creepshow (1982), Golden Years (tv mini-series, 1991), Sleepwalkers (1992), Storm of the Century (tv mini-series, 1999), Rose Red (tv mini-series, 2002) and the tv series Kingdom Hospital (2004), as well as adapted his own works with the screenplays for Cat’s Eye, Silver Bullet, Pet Semetary, The Stand and The Shining. King also directed one film with Maximum Overdrive (1986).
Copyright Richard Scheib 2001
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