Wow.

Just… wow.

This has to be one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. Seriously. This is just stupid.

Let me tell you just how boring and dumb this movie is: in the middle I hit pause on the remote and the roomie and I took a timeout to get ice cream from Dairy Queen. We needed some air.

But I should back up a bit. The Mangler is based upon a short story by Stephen King, and stars Robert Englund and Ted Levine, directed by Tobe Hooper of Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame. Based just on the pedigree, I was pretty stoked. I’m a horror movie fan, and that’s a pretty serious amount of firepower, a seemingly perfect recipe for a splattery popcorn flick.

So what went wrong? In short, EVERYTHING. I have no idea what the hell anyone involved was thinking. The story is utterly ridiculous. The characters could be replaced with cardboard cutouts. The plot goes off the rails, then off a cliff, and then into some sort of cave at the bottom of the ravine. The special effects are populated by the kind of CG that makes you want to smash all modern technology with a wrench and go live in a cave. Another first for SWS: I’m not going to skip spoiling this movie. It can’t be spoiled. You won’t likely believe what I describe anyway.

The movie opens with a Hot Topic version of a Dickensian workhouse laundry, centered around an enormous sheet-pressing and folding machine. There must be much more to this laundry than the one room with this gigantic machine, but the viewer never sees it; conveniently enough, all of the action happens near the giant set-piece. We see workers gossiping, slaving away, and then a gruesome accident occurs. This allows Robert Englund to stomp out of his office (located directly over the enormous prop) and make his presence known as a sadistic cross between Monty Burns, FDR and a pirate (the legbraces and eyepatch sort of make sense later)

Not to worry, however. Buffalo Bill’s on the case!

See, Ted Levine plays a cop whose name escapes me, but we took quickly to calling Mumbly Joe. Mumbly Joe lives next-door to a ridiculous hippie stereotype who happens to be his brother-in-law. His wife died some time ago in a car accident when he was behind the wheel, and it’s little wonder, considering that he almost causes another accident driving to work. He investigates the next gruesome accident at the factory, where an old woman is turned into the Laffy Taffy version of herself, and you might think that he was being set up for a love triangle with one of the interchangeable laundry women, but they forget about that plot line later. They forget about several, actually. So will you.

The investigation is quickly squashed as it turns out that the entire city government, consisting of (1) Corrupt Judge, (1) Corrupt Sheriff and the Laundry ownerm, conspire to cover up the mayhem. Levine is unhappy, but not unhappy enough to do anything about it, so he goes home and hangs out with his hippy bro-in-law some more.

The movie starts to become a blur at this point. There’s some kind of Satanic plot involving the laundry press, blood sacrifices, virgin girls, magic antacid tablets… and every so often Robert England will shamble around barking and leering so you don’t forget who the real star of this dreck happens to be.

A particular highlight: for some reason a fridge was sold by the laundry to a local family, and through circumstances too tedious to detail here, it got tainted with some of the evil from the laundry. (Why the local family bought an ancient fridge from a laundry, or what they were doing with it, I have no idea; they prop it up in the front yard and leave it there, so maybe they didn’t know either).

So you get to see Ted Levine and a hippy try to exorcise a fridge.

Seriously. Think back to 1995. Think what it must have felt like to plop down, what, 6 bucks, for a ticket, get your drinks and popcorn, find a seat, and, eventually, watch Ted Levine try to exorcise a fridge.

With a sledgehammer.

So after that, Butch and Hempy Sundance decide to put a stop to the evil sacrifice of another virgin and ride to the rescue. There’s a stupid fight, Robert Englund gets to die and utter some kind of Satanic version of the Lord’s Prayer (quote: “Our father, who art in hell, cursed be thy name…”) and Levine saves the day by running far enough that the CG budget expires and the sheet-press dies.

Only not. The ending reboots the whole movie in some halfbaked abortion of a Twilight Zone time-loop story, and Levine literally walks out on what’s left. Cue ending credits.

I cannot fathom this trainwreck. It’s so bad that it goes beyond being good, back to bad, back to good, further to apocalyptically awful, and then to a strange place of utter apathy. Watching it won’t kill anyone, but it might dash a piece of your faith in humankind that you’ll miss, some day.

They made a direct to video sequel, and I’ve never been more grateful that we don’t do direct to video for SWS. If it was this bad and actually headed to the screen, I cannot fathom how awful a sequel made for the cinematic bargain bin could be, and I don’t have to find out.

Yikes.

Next Week: Kathy Bates returns to SWS in Dolores Claiborne.
Last Week: A high point of SWS, The Shawshank Redemption