A massive laundry enterprise hangs the staff out to dry with the worst working conditions imaginable and a family’s dark pact with a satanic piece of machinery known as a mangle or laundry press. During a routine work load an employee cuts her hand on the mangles safety bar, rejuvenating the living beast’s lust for blood resulting in terribly painful deaths in delightful gory detail. The great Robert Englund and Ted Levine face off playing the roles they were born to play and some how even that can’t save this mangled mess of a movie. Every element of story that doesn’t involve England directly feels like a bad excuse to expand the simple concept to it’s last thread. What might have sounded spectacular on paper takes some great concepts and beats most of them to a bloody pulp on film. Of course there is no other place your going to see Englund and Levine verbally and physically butt heads with each other, so even with it’s flaws the Mangler is a film you want to add to your must see at least once list. Just don’t pay anything for it. Tobe Hooper seems to be a real fan boy for the genre, and really tries to go above and beyond with cool concepts to flesh out this Stephen King adaptation. It just doesn’t flow in the end.
