The movie
Show notes
“I'm uh, investigating a laundry folding machine with a bad case of demon possession.” We’re on the road to haunted Maine for Tobe Hooper’s 1995 Stephen King Bargain Bin curio The Mangler . When the gigantic industrial speed iron at Gartley’s Blue Ribbon Laundry Factory graphically swallows an elderly woman, bug-eyed, troubled local cop Officer John Hunton (Ted Levine) and his amateur mystic brother-in-law Mark (Daniel Matmor) begin to see this as more than just a freakish industrial accident when strange occurrences and gruesome injuries follow, under the grotesque, watchful eye of the company’s mad owner (Robert Englund) who harbours an ill-concealed secret. Released after the 1980s horror boom had long-since peaked, and before his fellow genre veteran Wes Craven breathed new life into it with the sly meta-horror Scream , Tobe Hooper had struggled to capitalise on his post- Poltergeist success, with his Cannon Films-funded Texas Chainsaw sequel flopping, leading him to embark on a pinballing career directing TV episodes and low budget features. This South Africa-shot would-be shocker, one of many adaptations of tales from Stephen King’s 1978 short story collection Night Shift , came at a time when the King name was increasingly ubiquitous. But with a spectrum of quality that ranged from the estimable Shawshank Redemption to the inexplicable Lawnmower Man , where does this mad tale of evil appliances land? Join Gali, Devlin and Patrick as they talk haunted refrigerators, magic legs, and expository antacids, and debate whether this is a forgotten gem, or a justly discarded sock in the cinematic laundry basket. Rewind Movie Podcast merchandise, and shirt designs from some of our favourite films, available here . If you have a film you’d like the gang to tackle, send us an email at rewindmoviepodcast@gmail.com . For introductions, essays, playlists, and the full back catalogue of episodes and specials, find us at rewindmoviecast.com . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/pr
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