Prolific horror author Stephen King and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre director Tobe Hooper waited decades for their first big-screen collaboration, so how did 1995’s long-awaited The Mangler end up being such a disappointing flop for genre fans? Both men achieved popularity in 1974 with massive crossover hits that transcended typical horror circles and won mainstream acclaim; Hooper and King seemed like a match made in horror movie heaven. Indeed they were on the small screen, as proven by the classic miniseries, Salem's Lot, which was another collaborative effort between the two. After that, expectations were understandably high when Hooper and King paired up again in 1995 for The Mangler.
Hooper had proven over the years that he could do more than the sheer, nerve-shredding endurance test horror of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, broadening his directorial remit to include family-friendly fantasy horror in the Poltergeist series and ambitious sci-fi mind-bending in the space vampire horror, Lifeforce. King, meanwhile, was living up to his name as a leading figure in horror fiction, with huge hit novels like Cujo, Christine, and The Shining winning both critical acclaim and fan adoration. A consistent stream of film adaptations were produced from his considerable back catalog as well.
As a result, when King and Hooper’s first feature-film collaboration, The Mangler, was announced in the mid-90s, the excitement in horror circles was palpable. The movie was being adapted from a short story featured in one of King’s most critically acclaimed collections, 1978's Night Shift. The collection already produced a cinematic hit in the form of 1984’s soon-to-be-remade Children of the Corn, but more impressively, Hooper and King’s blockbuster small-screen miniseries Salem’s Lot had been adapted from a novel based on Night Shift’s opening story, 'Jerusalem’s Lot'. This miniseries was a huge hit with horror fans, and remains a well-loved classic with some truly inspired scares and peerless, atmospheric direction from Hooper. So, given their combined talents and other successful collaborations, why was The Mangler a critical disaster that was laughed out of theatres upon release? The movie had an uphill struggle from the source story onwards, but the title alone gives the first compelling clue to its eventual inevitable failure.
The Mangler's Villain Is A Possessed Laundry Press
The Mangler's title might have given the game away for some savvy viewers. For those who don’t know what it refers to, a mangler isn't just a phrase for monstrous murderers like A Nightmare on Elm Street's Freddy Krueger, who slice and dice their way through teens in slasher movies, although King and Hooper probably wish that’s what their collaboration centered on instead. A mangler also is the term used for an industrial-sized laundry press, a machine traditionally used to iron large quantities of laundry at a time, typically in large-volume laundromats. Audiences of the '90s weren't exactly clamoring to see a laundry machine as the villain of a gory horror movie, no matter who was at the helm.
Despite The Mangler's choice to cast not just one, but two iconic horror villains in main roles, the actual eponymous villain of The Mangler is a possessed laundry press. As talented a director as Hooper undeniably is, even the creator of Leatherface himself isn’t able to make a massive piece of industrial machinery anchored to a warehouse building scary. Obviously, the machine can’t move on its own, meaning the entire plot could be avoided by simply putting the thing out of commission. Where King’s original story uses this fact to satirize uncaring employers who value profits over their workers' lives, the movie is unable to convey this heightened, over-the-top metaphor, meaning the characters simply seem insane as they repeatedly return to using a machine that messily ate someone days earlier.
Ted Levine Was Too Threatening For The Hero Role
No actor deserves to be typecast, and Silence of the Lambs standout star Ted Levine is no exception. Anthony Hopkins, after all, gave an electrifying performance as cannibal Alexandre Aja’s brutal The Hills Have Eyes remake. However, he’s simply too threatening to be convincing as the well-meaning good guy who is attempting to stop a possessed laundry press from killing the denizens of his small town. The Mangler never succeeded in rehabbing his image as an iconic villain.
Similarly, Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund, isn’t miscast in his villainous Mangler role, per se, but the horror veteran has very little to do. He ends up essentially acting as a mouthpiece for the movie’s real villain. The reliably hammy Englund plays his part with gusto, but it’s a big ask for any actor to make a laundry press scary. The Springwood slasher struggles to pull off this trick during his brief, somewhat pointless role as the titular laundry press' sacrifice-supplier. That doesn't mention the fact that his role - which has no equivalent in Stephen King's source short story - is all but redundant, as people seem perfectly willing to walk into the mangler’s maw even without his encouragement. Of course, victims need to seek out the mangler, since there’s no other way for the movie’s monster to find food short of the machine leaving the building and going on the run.
The Mangler's Best Part Was Cut Out
While it’s easy to say that casting and premise are a lot of what went wrong with The Mangler, the fact is that the creators nonetheless chose to adapt one of the funniest King short stories, then failed to commit to it fully. In the original story, the mangler itself jumps out of the building and runs off into the night, heading on a presumably bloody rampage. This is a darkly comic moment of cartoonish lunacy that lets readers know King is aware how silly his premise actually is. Until that pivotal point, the story takes itself relatively seriously, but it’s a brief read and the reader is always aware that, eventually, a punchline will need to arrive.
King's collaborations with George A Romero prove that the author's horror has a comic edge, and many of his stories end on a dark comedy note. Yet, in the movie adaptation, the demented premise is played straight-faced through to the self-serious ending, resulting in some intense and unintentional comedy. Without the titular laundry press’ all-out rampage and sentient town-terrorizing, The Mangler fails to find a consistent and effective tone, despite Hooper’s experience in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 proving that he’s more than able to direct goofy, gross-out horror-comedy movies.
