The Mangler (DVD)

With names like Tobe Hooper (director, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Stephen King (author, The Shining), Ted Levine and Robert Englund (actors, The Silence of the Lambs and A Nightmare of Elm Street respectively) you can't help but have at least some hopes for The Mangler.

Based upon a King short story and inspired by his own real-life experience of working in an industrial laundry, The Mangler is about machines come to life and thirsty for blood. The mangle is a massive, mechanized piece of folding equipment and it folds more than sheets as the movie starts off -- and shows us, in gruesome detail. As human beings are reduced to gut-strewn lumps at the Blue Ribbon Laundry in Rivers Valley, Maine, proprietor Bill Gartley (Robert Englund), just laughs it off. With his maniacal cackle and prodigious prosthetics, all he needs is green face paint to look just like The Wicked Witch of the West. Detective John Hunton (Ted Levine) is called in to investigate, and meets with resistance at every turn. So he goes off to investigate another homicide -- this one, the death of a little boy suffocated inside a refrigerator. The body is taken out, and the refrigerator goes crazy. Then Hunton decides to get Medieval on it's vegetable crisper and the thing ejects a malevolent spirit… or something like that. One the fridge is exorcised, it's back to the problem of the murderous mangler.

Hunton's brother-in-law, a granola-eating, long haired hippie type, Mark (Daniel Matmor), insists that demon possession is what's really behind these evil incidents. He looks more like he'd have The Farmer's Almanac, Love Signs and High Times on hand in his library, but instead he's got an impressive collection of magic and demonology tomes. He forces Hunton to sit down and read about Beelzebub and belladonna, and the skeptical cop is soon convinced.

They go to the Laundry in the dead of night, where they find Gartley trying to sacrifice his virginal sixteen-year-old niece (Vanessa Pike, who looks more like 26 and has the acting ability of a parking meter) to the Mangler. The mangler winds up chasing everyone throughout the building, and it's not pretty. I mean that, literally -- you'd better have some damn good special effects talent to pull something as unbelievable as that off even halfway convincingly.

There is talent in front of and behind the camera in The Mangler, and it shows here and there. But only "here and there". The gory action is tempered by long, talky bits and way too much conjecture. It wouldn't be bad if the exhibition set up some suspense, but it doesn't. It feels more like time-filler.  I found the movie barely tolerable, but some hardcore schlock horror fans might enjoy the gore and campy overacting.

The DVD has one additional feature: A side-by-side comparison of the theatrical release with the unedited version. There are a few extra blood squirts, but nothing notable.

(by Staci Layne Wilson)