Stephen King was red-hot in the 1990s, with Hollywood finding occasional box office gold with his books, working to adapt whatever they could. During this time, selectivity wasn’t exactly prioritized, resulting in projects like 1995’s “The Mangler.” King is certainly in possession of a vast imagination for the macabre, but many of his ideas are best suited for literary exploration, allowing the author to conjure wild visuals with pulpy descriptions and plotting. Bringing these ghoulish ideas to the screen is another story, and “The Mangler” certainly provides a creative challenge, with director Tobe Hooper (who also co-scripts) out to transform a tale about a possessed industrial speed ironer into a cinematic nightmare. The endeavor looks to expand King’s short story to fit a feature-length run time, but goofiness and tediousness overwhelms the offering, which hopes to get by on weirdness, but Hooper isn’t sharp enough of a filmmaker to really take this noisy effort to interesting places. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
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