The Mangler (1995)

The Mangler is a horror film about a possessed laundry machine.  That is the thing to understand about it before deciding if this is something that one wants to watch.  Not that it was directed by Tobe Hooper, not that it is adapted from a short story by Stephen King and also not the fact that Robert Englund plays a major villain role.  It is about a possessed laundry machine, although a possessed refrigerator also comes into play.

That is what often makes reviewing certain movies hard.  Some critics have despaired at having to review certain things, like Godzilla or James Bond films, but in the end those are easy as they have been around so long that they can be reviewed against others in the same series.  When reviewing something about Satanic industrial equipment one has to pull back and realize that, unless an extreme case of serendipity hit the production to make everything work, there is no way the movie is going to live up to the expectation of being either a conventionally good film or bad enough to make it a cult classic.  It's something that should never have even worked as a short story, but somehow King made it do so, although as with many of his weird concepts that is where it should have remained. 

Bill Gartley (Englund) is the owner of the Blue Ribbon Laundry, the industrial heart of the Maine town of Rikersville.  Through his foreman Stanner (Demetre Phillips) Gartley runs the laundry with an iron hand, with the centerpiece being an ancient machine that steams and folds the laundry, nicknamed the Mangler.  When an employee (Vera Blacker) is sucked into the machine local officer John Hunton (Ted Levine) is called to the scene but is not surprised when the machine is quickly declared safe for operation and business goes on as usual.

During the chaos of the incident Gartley's niece Sherry (Vanessa Pike) is also injured and, within days, more accidents occur, including Gartley's live-in lover Lin Sue (Lisa Morris) being wounded by the machine.  Hunton's brother-in-law Mark (Daniel Matmor), who is heavily read in parapsychology, begins to suspect that the machine may be possessed, particularly after a local boy suffocates in an old icebox that received an electric shock during the initial accident.  Hunton soon begins to learn the truth about the source of Gartley's wealth and the real reason that the entire town seems to be under his sway. 

The strange thing is that Stephen King's story is quite memorable, and it works.  The allegory of runaway capitalism and profits over people is not subtle, as Gartley's workers literally feed the machine.  But, as with many of King's short stories, it works because it is only a few pages long.  He always took Edgar Allen Poe's advice and kept his shorter works lean and mean.  There is barely enough story to make it part of an anthology, much less a feature film.

Tobe Hooper tries, though, and Robert Englund is a great choice for the main human villain.  He's a slimy slavedriver who cares nothing for anyone who serves under him other than possibly Lin Sue.  If it was just an anthology with him, a protagonist and the machine things would be fine, although Jeremy Crutchley is also on hand to give a good performance as the enigmatic Pictureman, a police photographer with an office in the city morgue.  

The problem is Ted Levine.  While he was great in Silence of the Lambs as Buffalo Bill it is apparent that he was never meant to be a leading man.  Sometimes his lines are unintelligible, and many times the role devolves into slapstick comedy.  The latter would be fine if the tone did bend toward comedy, which given the plot it should, but it's never clear if that is Hooper's intention.  It seems like it, but at other times he seems to be trying to make a serious monster film.  

That is what makes it a failure.  There are parts that are enjoyable, and I have a feeling Levine and Daniel Matmor were both playing their roles for laughs, while Englund was just being his usual and having fun while Hooper tried to figure out what he was doing.  The Mangler was Hooper's first feature after his run with Cannon and it feels that the years of being treated as an outsider and having his skills as a director ignored by Hollywood have taken its toll at this point.  This was never going to be a great, Oscar-worthy film no matter how it was approached, but Hooper's failure to go all in on the subtext and the comedy robs The Mangler of the chance of being the cult hit it could have been. 

The Mangler (1995)

Time: 106 minutes

Starring: Robert Englund, Ted Levin, Daniel Matmor, Vanessa Pike, Jeremy Crutchley, Lisa Morris

Director: Tobe Hooper