A carnival of technology

There is a fate worse than death

Rated R for gory horror violence and language.
Rated O by the USCCB (link)

Starring Robert Englund, some other guy who looked kind of like Robert Englund, and Ted Levine playing Frankenstein’s monster on a Listerine bender playing a cop.

Viewed 2005-05-27 by dshea, dcantrell, susi, dane

Stephen King really likes demonic possession. Children of the Corn II’s antagonist was a kid possessed by a corn demon. Dreamcatcher was about people possessed by diarrhea-based aliens. In The Mangler, the antagonist is a demonically possessed industrial laundry presser and folder, joined by a demonically possessed refrigerator as a sort of miniboss. The fate worse than death is death by folding.

This movie tries to drive itself more on gore than on plot. There is some explanation provided for the Mangler’s behavior, given by the hippie character with plenty of resources on the occult and laundry equipment, but none of it matters. All of that is just filler between the three or four scenes where someone gets eaten, ironed, and neatly folded. As comic relief to break the remaining 90 minutes of tedium, Ted Levine attempts to talk without ever moving his tongue.

The Mangler, as a sort of side-plot from the inanimate antagonist, also provides a hidden documentary on anachronism. This small Maine town—Cabot Cove or whatever it’s supposed to be—seems to have been casually grazed by the hand of technology, leaving computers and new cars beside ancient-looking gas refrigerators, flash bulbs, and labor laws. I believe that the moral of this is that Maine sucks and will kill you.

I had seen Universal Soldier before seeing this movie. I couldn’t remember if I had or not, but then I saw the ones in this movie and thought, “oh, right, that movie…yeah, I remember the first one.”

That didn’t make this one bearable. Van Damme isn’t even a bad actor. He’s not even an actor, really. It’d be like me trying to act. Also, he has that accent which makes him sound like a pussy.

My main question about this movie is how can Van Damme be in this one if he died in the first one? Didn’t the first one establish that the universal soldiers were dead soldiers that had been brought back to life with neon green medical gel and all they could do is kill (see, in the medical gel world, neon blue would mean they’d turn in to zombies…see Resident Evil for confirmation).

This movie clearly establishes Van Damme as not-a-unisol, but they make references to that being his old job. What? How can being dead be a former job?

I was very disappointed that the giant tank of acid wasn’t used for anything. They kept walking by it. Over and over. Very disappointing.

Also, like Shea, I question why we keep making movie plots around self-aware computers. James Cameron constructed a well-formed proof showing that self-aware computers are bad (Terminator/1984, Terminator 2/1991). Come up with a better idea.

I give this movie 3/10 because we didn’t take any breaks watching it and it was watchable, but nothing happened that you didn’t already expect.

I have to admit that I was little worried about not understanding the story because I couldn’t remember which of the seven Children of the Corn films I had and had not seen. Still, I went in to the movie optimistic that I could figure out what was going on.

I should note that our copy of the film was a Hong Kong VHS rip since the 2nd installment of this series is not available on DVD in the United States. Besides being very grainy and having just stereo sound, we were able to pick out the most important details. During our bad movie watching sessions, I try to make note of the special effects and I also try to assemble some sort of plot in my head. This usually involves indentifying the protagonist(s).

Throughout the whole movie I never could figure out who the protagonist was supposed to be. I think it was the corn since that was the least logical. If you watch this film, it feels like 3 or 4 short films that are thrown together and they happen to connect under a central theme (corn). Think about movies like Airport and Earthquake where you have a random ensemble cast and they are all joined by this central event that’s happening. Except in this movie there is no ensemble and the central event is rotting corn. Not that great.

Some of the highlights of the film including lowering a jacked up house on to an old lady, Wizard of Oz style. I also claim predicting that the combine would be responsible for killing the main evil child. It was. And I predicted it!

I didn’t understand the native American guy. Like he had some sort of connection with the corn that involved a tree and a ghost, but that’s about all I remember.

One of the actors was Terrence Knox (easily identified by his disappearing/re-appearing hot pink shirt). I first saw him in the short-lived TV drama called Tour of Duty. This was not his best work. This movie, I mean. Tour of Duty was meant to compete with China Beach and I think it was better because it had less Ricki Lake.

On the special effects front we didn’t have anything special except for some lame fake blood and that thermal vision camera effect they used in Predator. The corn was capable of this, I think?

What else can I say about the corn? Not much. We did take four breaks while watching this movie. No one objected either and it was difficult to sit back down and finish it. I give this movie 2/10 only because I did finish watching it and the combine did kill someone. It loses the remaining 8 stars because it didn’t make any sense at all.