The Mangler
by Tobe Hooper
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Actor: Daniel Matmor, Jeremy Crutchley, Robert Englund, Ted Levine, Vanessa PikeDirector: Tobe Hooper
Brand: NEW Line Home Video
Writer: Tobe Hooper
Producer: Anant Singh
Producer: Harry Alan Towers
Writer: Harry Alan Towers
Producer: Helena Spring
Writer: Stephen David Brooks
Writer: Stephen King
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 106 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-08-17
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: New Line Home Entertainment
DVD Reviews of The Mangler
DVD Review: Mangled
Summary: 2 Stars
"The Mangler" is a film that should have never gotten a green light. Period. This is an embarrassment for nearly everyone involved, and that's saying something when you look at the talent in front of and behind the camera. First of all, you've got a movie based on a Stephen King short story. O.K., that's hardly a ringing endorsement considering how many sludgefests we've seen on the silver screen with, "Based on a story by Stephen King" above or below the title, but STILL. We ought to expect something special, right? Uh huh. Second, we've got Robert Englund camping it up as one of the two main baddies in the film. Not only that, he stomps about in old guy makeup with metal accoutrements hanging off his every limb. Cool, right? Well, yeah--except we don't see nearly enough of him. Third, and finally, none other than Tobe Hooper assumed the directorial duties for "The Mangler." The man behind the brilliant "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" and "The Funhouse" stepping up to the plate to knock another horror movie out of the ballpark. Sorry Tobe, but "The Mangler" strikes out at the plate. How could this movie possibly miss, you ask? Not only does it miss, it misses by a couple of million miles.
William Gartley (Englund) runs a laundry factory on the outskirts of some small town. He's a tyrant of a boss, prone to stalking about a catwalk that runs around the top of the factory while bellowing nonsensical insults at the put upon female workers toiling in the morass below. And the plant is a morass, full of steaming machinery that looks like it stepped right out of a Dickens novel. The centerpiece is a gigantic laundry folding apparatus, called the Hadley Watkins or some such nonsense, which systematically chews and folds humans when its not doing sheets. The first death in the factory summons the local constabulary in the form of Officer John Hutton (Ted Levine), but nothing much happens. We then follow Hutton back to his house where we meet his hippy dippy neighbor Mark Jackson (Daniel Matmor), a kook whose hobbies seem to revolve around the investigation of the supernatural. How handy! We just know Jackson's hocus pocus will serve a purpose later in the narrative, and indeed we are correct because the Hadley Watkins machine is actually a demonic force that gives power to those who feed it human sacrifices. Sigh. You know, this sounded better when Stephen King wrote the story.
"The Mangler" lurches from one turgid scene to another, only garnering interest when we catch sight of some of the gory carnage that inevitably arises when flesh meets steel. After a few more people say bye bye thanks to the machine, Hutton gets suspicious. It helps that a flashbulb tossing crime photog by the name of J.J.J. Pictureman (Jeremy Crutchley) pops up once in awhile to capture death on film and drop a few cryptic statements about the goings on in town. Well, it doesn't help that much, mind you, but he does swing by more than a few times looking all old and shriveled up in pancake makeup that should make a real special effects artist blanche in embarrassment. There's some nonsense about a possessed refrigeration unit from the factory--or whatever that white box with fire coming out of it was--and a bunch of scenes involving Hutton beating his fists against anything he can find and raging. I don't know; nothing really makes that much sense here. We also learn that Gatley is up to no good with a certain family member. Again, I don't really know how this relates to the narrative. By the time the movie judders to a conclusion that's witnessed the Hadley stalking about the factory like some sort of steel dinosaur with a bad attitude, I was ready for a nap.
I kept thinking the studio mangled "The Mangler" because the movie just doesn't seem to fit together very well. Of course, that's not the only problem here. A big mistake was casting Ted Levine in the lead role. I'm not criticizing his abilities as an actor; he did a fantastic job in "The Silence of the Lambs." But here he just...well...doesn't inspire any believability. He's more suited to playing baddies than good guys, what with that slurry voice and all. I clucked with disapproval on several occasions when he delivered lines that should have been serious but came off sounding banal because of that voice. Englund's much better--he dances around like some malevolent metallic elf at one point--but his scenes are so few that I felt the movie could have succeeded if only he had been the primary focus. The gore is great too, with lots of quick cuts of limbs and heads being folded and pressed amidst great gushings of sauce, but again there isn't enough to make up for the myriad parts of the movie that just drag by so slowly. I find it incredible that this movie inspired two sequels, one of which is coming out in the near future. I sure hope they're better than this heap o' compost!
Incredibly, there are extras on the DVD. I don't know if there's a commentary track on the disc (I wouldn't have listened to one anyway), but I do remember the inclusion of additional gore scenes. What they did is split the screen and play the edited version on top and the extra sauce on the bottom. The cuts are quick but especially juicy in some parts. It's nothing that would have helped the film had they been included, though. I'm betting good old Tobe wishes this one would just go away. Frankly, I'd rather rewatch "Chain Saw" and "Lifeforce" than spend a second looking at this tripe again. Not recommended for anyone.
Description of The Mangler
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