Let me start with a warning: if you ever find yourself watching The Mangler, it’s probably because life has taken a turn. Maybe your ex took the dog. Maybe your landlord raised the rent and your soul. Maybe you just really hate yourself and want to punish your eyeballs. Either way, this movie exists—and not in the quiet “forgotten classic” kind of way. No, The Mangler roars into your living room like a demonic clothes iron and screams, “I was directed by Tobe Hooper and written by Stephen King’s typewriter during a seizure.”
On paper, it should’ve worked. A horror maestro adapting a story by the King of Horror himself? What could go wrong? The answer is everything. Everything could go wrong. And it does. In crisp, high-volume 1995 glory.
The Premise (God Help Us All)
The film’s villain is not a serial killer. Not a demon. Not even a clown from Maine. It’s… a laundry press. A giant, industrial, steam-powered ironing machine possessed by a demonic force. You read that right. The antagonist is a haunted appliance.
Let’s walk through this: At the Blue Ribbon Laundry—an establishment with more steam than a sauna run by Satan—accidents keep happening. And by “accidents,” I mean the Mangler is chomping human limbs like a broken vending machine that just discovered it likes the taste of blood. A middle-aged woman gets pulled in and folded into ravioli by this steel beast. Later, another worker gets her hand gnawed off like the machine’s auditioning for Hellraiser: The Union Job.
Enter Detective John Hunton (Ted Levine, forever cursed to be “Buffalo Bill” with a badge). He’s a hard-drinking, sweat-covered, overacting mess of a man, constantly on the verge of either a breakdown or a hernia. He investigates the accidents and quickly realizes this machine may be more than just OSHA-noncompliant. He teams up with his occult-obsessed brother-in-law, played by Daniel Matmor (who delivers every line like he’s narrating a Choose Your Own Adventure paperback), and together they uncover the horrific truth: this laundry press is literally possessed. By a demon. From Hell.
You know, typical workplace hazard stuff.
The Monster is a Laundry Press
The Mangler itself is absurd. Imagine a rejected Transformers character designed by a bitter steamfitter with no imagination. It’s all gears, valves, metal rollers, and a healthy appetite for wrinkled blouses and human sacrifice. Watching it “kill” people is like watching a Rube Goldberg machine commit murder—slow, clunky, and weirdly elaborate. Victims are drawn in screaming, crushed with unnecessary sound effects, and spit out like demonic origami.
It’s somehow less frightening than a malfunctioning Roomba.
Ted Levine: Method Acting or Internal Stroke?
Let’s talk about Levine’s performance. He’s sweaty. Constantly sweaty. Not just “under pressure” sweaty. I mean soaked—like he’s trying to outrun the script. He growls every line as if trying to win a gravel-voice contest against a cement mixer. “I HATE THIS TOWN!” he bellows at one point, and honestly, so did I.
He punches vending machines, stares blankly at blood puddles, and fumbles through every line like he’s reading it off a napkin. Watching him try to take this seriously is the best part of the movie. It’s like watching Daniel Day-Lewis method act in a Chuck E. Cheese.
Plot Twists That Should Be Felonies
Somehow, this movie gets dumber as it goes.
There’s a subplot about a young woman who gets her blood on the Mangler, causing it to awaken. But wait, the demon inside the press only wants virgins. So now we’re in Laundry Machine vs. Celibacy: Dawn of Fold. Later, a demonic icebox tries to kill someone in a kitchen, and I wish I were joking. The fridge attacks. The movie briefly becomes The Appliances Strike Back.
By the time the protagonists try to perform an exorcism on the Mangler with holy water and occult Latin (read by a man in denim overalls), you will either be laughing uncontrollably or clutching your TV remote and whispering, “Make it stop.”
The Set Design: Hell by Home Depot
The laundry facility looks like it was designed by Satan’s HVAC guy. Every corner hisses. Steam pours out of walls for no reason. It’s less a workplace and more a David Lynch fever dream on a tight budget. There are no windows. Everyone looks miserable. Even the clothes look scared.
Add to that a weird color palette that makes everything look like it’s filmed through a nicotine filter. This is one of those movies where you can smell the mildew through the screen. It’s all sickly greens, grime-covered grays, and the occasional splash of arterial red when the Mangler gets peckish.
Dialogue That Could Be a Crime Against Language
Nobody talks like a human being in this movie. People shout things like “THE MACHINE IS ALIVE!” and “YOU MUST FEED IT!” like they’re in a high school play about haunted radiators. Every line sounds dubbed, even when it’s not. Characters alternate between dramatic whispering and outright shrieking, like the script was written by a schizophrenic foghorn.
One particularly glorious moment:
Matmor’s character, staring dead-eyed at the Mangler, says:
“It’s a Biblical demon… older than Satan himself.”
Pause. Beat.
Ted Levine: “What in the hell does that mean?”
No one knows, Ted. Not even the screenwriter.
The Ending: Explosions and Sudden Sequel Bait
In true ’90s fashion, the film ends with an explosion. The Mangler is banished (sort of), the laundry burns, and just when you think you’re safe—bam! The possessed machine is rebuilt and still folding. Evil never dies, it just gets new parts.
They actually made two more Mangler movies after this. Think about that. Somewhere, someone greenlit The Mangler 2and The Mangler Reborn. You could’ve given that money to schools. Or dogs. Or literally anyone else.
Final Verdict:
The Mangler is a shining example of horror gone off the rails, a movie so stupidly earnest it circles all the way back around to entertaining. It’s part haunted house, part workplace accident, and all insane. Tobe Hooper either lost a bet, had a tax problem, or just really hated dry-cleaning.
Watch it only if:
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You think Maximum Overdrive was “too subtle.”
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You want to see Ted Levine scream at a laundry press.
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You enjoy watching possessed household items commit manslaughter.
Everyone else? Toss this one in the wash, put it on permanent press, and forget it ever happened. Your socks deserve better.
