Metacritic-Rezensionen

Lame and clunky in many places which doesn't manage to save this bizarre premise from dull absurdity.

The best part of the movie is the fetid, oppressive atmosphere Hooper works up inside the sweatshop that evocatively serves as an industrial hell. The Mangler itself is an imposing creation, and its gory activities (which are more so on an unrated video version) pack an occasional chill, but too much of the movie is devoted to slack plotting and overstated acting.

One would expect a horror movie about a possessed laundry-press to put the audience through the wringer. Instead, this tedious Stephen King adaptation takes the two-dimensional characters of the source story and squashes them even flatter.

With its clunky narrative and lack of solid scares or gory effusions until the obligatory all-stops-out climax, pic ends up with little to excite fans of “Elm Street”-style shockers or Hooper’s own “Poltergeist.”

It is not a compliment to suggest that a demonically possessed piece of machinery embarked on a bloodthirsty rampage has more personality than most of the flesh-and-blood characters in The Mangler, a horror movie based on a Stephen King story.

Hooper could have also made at least a token attempt to create one interesting or sympathetic character and shot more than one take per scene--even by horror standards, the acting here is lame. Call it "The Bungler."

After a string of disappointments culminating in this silly waste of time, it's hard to care if horror's golden boy carries on or not. Forget The Mangler. Go do your laundry instead.

Adapted by Hooper, Stephen Brooks and Peter Welbeck from a King short story, The Mangler is ludicrous from start to finish: Its plot lines dangle, its effects fail to dazzle and the acting and directing are uniformly bad. The movie looks as if it's gone through its namesake, the five-ton, 40-foot-long Hadley Watson Model-6 Steam Ironer & Folder. Even the least demanding of genre fans will be hard-pressed to tremble in its presence.

The Mangler is one of the worst movies we've seen in years, and we've seen a lot of movies. [6 Mar 1995, p.5C]

Plodding and virtually plotless (employee gets caught in maw of machine, blood squirts, boss tells everyone to get back to work, employee gets caught in maw of machine...), The Mangler might have been amusing if it had been played for laughs. Instead, this dreary yarn is hardly played for anything. [6 Mar 1995, p.D02]