A carnival of technology

This movie was difficult to watch. Reading the jacket cover you think, “wow, a horror movie about a possessed laundry machine? kick ass!” But then you actually watch it and you begin to demand the world give you those 106 minutes back. OK, let’s get in to the movie.

First, a possessed laundry folding machine? Are you kidding. I’d say it’s worse than Killdozer. What moron can’t get away from a STATIONARY OBJECT? So what if it’s possessed? Family Guy had it right when they had the short scene with the Stephen King parody pitching his idea for a story involving an evil lamp monster. Then he just asks for money.

It’s set in Maine, I think. Every Stephen King movie is set in Maine, which no one can relate to because you aren’t allowed in Maine if you’re an outsider. Stranger than that is the choice of props for the movie. You can’t really place the time period because the cop drives a Jeep Cherokee SUV and has a computer, but the laundry machine and facility look like something from the 1920s. Eh?

Robert Englund stars as the owner of this machine and he does what he can with the part, which isn’t much. His character in V was better. They did manage to find a Jesus look-alike to play the pot smoking hippie that happens to practice witchcraftery. Yeah, he gets cut in half by the laundry folding machine.

Oh, the we have title point was reached when pot-smoking Jesus was reminiscing about his job on that machine. He says it’s called the Mangler. Yeah, sounds fun!

I give this movie 2/10 because it was just plain bad. There were only 3 sets. And Ted Levine’s voice. Come on.

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.