I never read the Stephen King short story that inspired 1995’s The Mangler, but if it’s anywhere near as silly as this Tobe Hooper-directed movie, I won’t be checking it out any time soon. The Mangler is a mess.
There’s been a tragedy at the Blue Ribbon Laundry factory, a business owned by eccentric millionaire William Gartley (Robert Englund). Soon after Gartley’s adopted daughter Sherry (Vanessa Pike) injured her hand on the folding machine (a large, imposing piece of machinery nicknamed “The Mangler”), her elderly co-worker Mrs. Frawley (Vera Blacker) was pulled into the folder and killed.
Detective John Hunton (Ted Levine) is sent in to investigate, and over the course of a few days - and a few conversations with his late wife’s brother, Mark (Daniel Matmor) - Hunton comes to believe the Mangler has been possessed by an evil spirit. But the closer Hunton comes to discovering the truth, the more pushback he gets from the town’s leaders, who seem to be conspiring to keep what’s happening at the Blue Ribbon Laundry a secret.
Ted Levine is manic as the oft-angry cop with a chip on his shoulder (his wife’s death in a car accident a few years earlier is the catalyst for his aggressive behavior), and while I wouldn’t call it his best performance (it’s no Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs), he at least is interesting enough to keep us watching and rooting for him. Sporting leg braces and plenty of make-up, Robert Englund is also kind of fascinating as the villainous Gartley.
Where The Mangler falls apart is not in its ridiculous story of a possessed machine, but the manner in which it is told. This movie is all over the place. Characters jump to conclusions with very little evidence (Hunton and Mark are planning an exorcism of the machine well before we the audience are convinced they’re right) and others seem to change personalities for no clear reason (Lin Sue, played by Lisa Morris, has a run-in with the Mangler and, before you know it, has transformed from a sympathetic character exploited by Hunton into his cold-blooded accomplice). At times The Mangler is so ridiculous that I couldn’t help but feel Hooper and company missed the boat; this should have been a comedy instead of a straight-up horror movie.
It’s hard to believe the man responsible for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Eaten Alive, Salem’s Lot and Poltergeist also turned out The Mangler. They should have run the script through that folder on the first day of shooting. A little mangling might have helped it make more sense.
Rating: 3.5 out of 10