The Mangler (1995)

Directed by Tobe Hooper. Starring Ted Levine, Daniel Matmor, Robert Englund, Jeremy Crutchley, Demetre Phillips, Vanessa Pike, Lisa Morris, Ted Le Plat, Ashley Hayden. [R]

After a demonic industrial laundry press slaughters an old lady, an unbalanced detective (Levine) investigates the “accidental death” and discovers that the murderous machine, to paraphrase one poor character, tasted blood and found it to its liking. Is it at all possible that the business owner, a grotesque and sadistic weirdo played by Englund in a fashion that can best be described as “if Jack Palance were the voice of Mr. Burns while the old billionaire was trying to play Dr. Strangelove” is somehow involved, if not outright responsible? (Okay, maybe not best described as that, but the acting is so much expired ham across the board that it’s hard to even keep one’s bearings; consider Levine, who sounds like he got elocution lessons from listening to the “authentic frontier gibberish” from Blazing Saddles.) On the one hand, this adaptation of a Stephen King short story provides bad laughs and plenty of gore—especially the unrated version—but on the other hand, it’s as ridiculous and inept as all but the very worst adaptations of the author’s work. Truly, you have not lived the “bad, bad movie life” until you’ve seen people chased down by a computer-generated laundry-folding machine that broke free of its moorings. Followed by a couple of in-name-only sequels.

19/100