The Mangler (1995)

Director: Tobe Hooper

Writer: Stephen King, Tobe Hooper, Stephen David Brooks, Harry Alan Towers

Tagline: Escape is not an option.

Actors: Robert Englund, Ted Levine, Daniel Matmor, Jeremy Crutchley, Vanessa Pike, Demetre Phillips, Lisa Morris, Vera Blacker

Runtime: 1h 46m

Category: Possession, Supernatural

Synopsis: During a normal day at Blue Ribbon Laundry, one of the workers gets her hand caught in an automatic folding machine known as a mangler. Only after this incident have people noticed strange things about the machine. So Officer John Hunton is sent to investigate. He confides in his hippie, occultist friend Mark Jackson who suggests that the machine may be possessed. Not taking him seriously at all, he continues with his investigation, while the machine takes more victims. Now in a desperate attempt to stop the killings, John and Mark head out to the laundry warehouse to exorcise the demon within the machine. If they succeed, they could very well be heroes; if they fail, they could unleash the demon’s true powers and damn us all!

Review: I think that watching this movie at like ten o’clock on a Sunday night is not a good idea. Considering I just wanted something to watch and almost didn’t care what it was, I ended turning on this heap of garbage. Thank God it was free from Comcast’s OnDemand feature! I might have thrown a temper tantrum!

The story was absolutely ridiculous in every respect. Why would a demon from Hell come to earth to take the form of a stationary machine? Why wouldn’t the demon want to be mobile, like a car or something? It was just ridiculous. I don’t think I liked anything about the story or its plot, or its plot points, or anything else for that matter.

The acting was…just…uhg. I love Robert Englund…and I loved Ted Levine in Silence of the Lambs (1991)…but this is just torture. I didn’t even like Englund’s performance in this movie…and I don’t ever knock Englund. But the whole cast just seemed to overact…all the time! It seemed like they were trying to be hoaky and overzealous. I found almost everything about this movie to be funny and poorly acted.

The script itself wasn’t even good. I thought that maybe because of the apparent overacting, that they might have had a great script, but the cast was just screwing it up…yeah…no such luck. The script was as bad as the acting. I am disappointed in Tobe Hooper.

The effects were great up until the end. I thought that the gore was very well done with some nice arm ripping/crushing scenes and some nice piles of mangled up bodies. But at the end…the machine…picked itself up…and gave chase! How ridiculous! Now I have this computer animated machine chasing after our hero and his heroine…I am not happy. I understand that that kind of technology was new and still being perfected, but come on!

Rating: 6. Had to give it some good markings for the effects up until the end. So I left it at 6. If anyone wants to refute that, you can email me whenever and we can have ourselves a nice little quiet argument. Fun for the whole family. If you’re bored one day and you see this movie on your TV…STAY AWAY! (6of25).