Ah, Trucks (1997). The USA Network decided Stephen King’s short story needed another adaptation after Maximum Overdrive already proved that sentient semis are about as scary as a honking goose. And yet, here we are — a made-for-TV horror flick where eighteen-wheelers stalk people with all the menace of a Roomba with low batteries. Let’s peel the asphalt off this mess and take a joyless ride down this highway of cinematic potholes.
The Setup: Nevada, But Discount
The movie is set in Lunar, Nevada — a town so tiny and pointless it makes you wonder if even the aliens at Area 51 would bother abducting the residents. It’s got a gas station, a diner, and more tumbleweeds than budget. Trucks suddenly gain sentience after some military base nonsense (because when you don’t know what to blame, just say “chemical leak near Area 51”).
Cue the trucks revving their engines and circling humans like confused sharks in a parking lot. Except instead of terror, we get the sound of idling diesel engines and the lingering question: “Who greenlit this?”
Brenda Bakke: The Lone Bright Spot
Let’s be clear: this movie is a steaming wreck, but it has Brenda Bakke in it. She plays Hope, a hiking-tour operator who looks like she wandered in from a different, better film. She delivers lines about killer trucks with such straight-faced sincerity you almost believe her — almost. Watching her act opposite Timothy Busfield (our painfully bland lead, Ray) is like watching a Ferrari parked next to a rusty pickup.
Without Bakke, this movie would be unwatchable. With her, it’s… well, still unwatchable, but at least you can say, “Hey, Brenda Bakke’s hot, so that’s something.”
The Trucks: Villains With No Personality
The supposed villains are, of course, the trucks. But let’s be real — these hulking machines aren’t menacing. They just… drive around. They honk. They occasionally nudge buildings. At one point, a toy RC dump truck smashes a window and kills a postal worker, which might be the least intimidating death scene in horror history. Imagine getting your obituary printed with “slain by Tonka.” That’s not tragic; that’s stand-up comedy.
Even Maximum Overdrive had the courtesy to give us a killer truck with a demonic Green Goblin face. Here, we just get ordinary semis. And trust me, if you’ve ever been to a Walmart parking lot at 2 a.m., you’ve seen scarier trucks than this.
The Deaths: Creative in Theory, Stupid in Execution
Somehow, the script decided that “trucks killing people” was too limited, so it spices things up with sentient hazmat suits and inflating rubber murder gear. Yes, a hazmat suit fills with air, grabs an axe, and slaughters two men. It’s less scary and more like Weekend at Bernie’s: OSHA Edition.
The rest of the kills? People get run over, slammed into walls, or asphyxiated with dirt by dump trucks. One guy makes Molotov cocktails, blows himself up, and it feels less like a death scene and more like an audition tape for Jackass.
The Humans: Discount Survivor Club
The humans trapped in this mess are the usual TV-movie stereotypes:
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Ray (Timothy Busfield): Gas station owner and bland dad energy personified. The kind of guy who looks like he’s perpetually worried about his taxes.
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Hope (Brenda Bakke): Gorgeous, competent, and tragically stuck babysitting everyone else’s bad acting.
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Logan (Brendan Fletcher): Ray’s son, who gets way too much screen time for someone whose main contribution is teenage whining.
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Abby and Thad: Tourists who exist solely to prove that visitors should never stop in small Nevada towns.
There’s also a drunk redneck who tries to fight the trucks with beer and dynamite. He dies. The trucks win. The audience loses.
The Ending: The Sky Is Falling… Literally
After endless circling and a diner explosion, the survivors finally get away in a helicopter. Victory! Except — oh no! The helicopter has no pilot. It’s just… flying itself. Get it? Machines are evil! They’re taking over everything!
The problem is, by this point, the audience is too numb to care. If the film had ended with the toaster strangling someone with its cord, it wouldn’t have felt any less absurd.
Dark Humor Nuggets of Awfulness
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The RC truck death alone deserves its own America’s Funniest Home Videos segment. Bob Saget would’ve had a field day.
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Imagine running from a killer eighteen-wheeler in a parking lot. Just… turn left. It’s not a velociraptor.
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The “haunted hazmat suit with an axe” is the film’s high point, and that should tell you everything about the quality bar here.
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Trucks circling a diner for an hour feels less like horror and more like a deleted scene from Cars 4: The Divorce Years.
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Ray literally helps refuel the trucks to “buy time,” which is the vehicular equivalent of feeding stray dogs that already bit your leg off.
Why It Fails (Beyond the Obvious)
Stephen King’s original short story works because it’s short: a bleak little nightmare about machines turning on us. But stretch that into 95 minutes of TV movie filler, and you get scenes of people bickering in diners, trucks driving in circles, and Brenda Bakke trying her damnedest to act like she’s not regretting signing the contract.
The film is bloodless (thanks, network TV), toothless (thanks, budget), and witless (thanks, script). It’s horror without horror, suspense without suspense, and satire without satire. Maximum Overdrive may have been bonkers, but at least it had cocaine-fueled chaos. Trucks is just a beige nightmare.
Final Verdict: Roadkill for the Soul
Trucks isn’t scary. It isn’t thrilling. It’s not even so-bad-it’s-good. It’s just bad. But Brenda Bakke’s in it, and that’s the one reason it earns half a point.
If you ever wanted to watch semis menacing diners like they’re waiting for coffee refills, this is your jam. For everyone else, just go stand in a Walmart parking lot at midnight — it’ll be scarier, cheaper, and probably better acted.
