The Mangler Reborn (2005)

You won't be disappointed!

hyped garbage

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

I watch a lot of bad movies...really. (I average watching 15 to 20 movies a week, most of which are independents, or B-movies.) Sometimes bad movies make me mad. (Why am I being treated like I'm an idiot? What talented person didn't get to make his movie because the studio spent it on this piece of junk?) Sometimes I'm sad. (What a horrible treatment of a book/story/author I like! What a botched opportunity!) TMR just makes me shake my head. I understand what the writers were trying for, but somewhere between the word processor and the screen, everything broke down. The movie is made competently, in the sense that the film is properly exposed and all the props seem to work, but everything else is pretty much hosed up.As an aside, I can pick locks fairly well (not as good as a decent locksmith, but better than your college room-mate) and I usually have two or three sets of picks, or a portable combination tool, with me in my car all the time. I can tell you with 80% certainty just by looking at a lock whether or not I'm probably going to be able to get it. After a minute or two of working on it, I can usually tell you whether I'll EVER be able to pick it successfully. And I sure as heck never pick a lock open that I can't pick closed, or allow myself to be locked into an area from which I can't escape.BTW, all the characters are jackasses and they all die.

The Mangler Reborn starts as Jamie Blake (Aimee Brooks) arrives home after she gets the sack from her job only to find out that her husband is leaving her, can her day get any worse? Sure it can, a water pipe could break & she could call repair man Hadley Watson (Weston Blakesley) who in fact might turn out to be possessed by an evil laundry mangler & kidnaps female victims to shove in the mangler & get, well, mangled. Of course the odds of that happening are slim but it still happens anyway. Back at Watson's house where the evil laundry mangler resides he throw's Jamie into a room & locks the door, however unbeknown to either Jamie or Watson father & son burglary team Rick (Reggie Bannister) & Mike (Scott Speiser) are also trapped inside the house after the decided to rob it. Can the terrified survivors escape from the house & avoid becoming mangled in the mangler?Written & directed by Erik Gardner & Matt Cunningham this sequel to Tobe Hooper's horror flick The Mangler (1995) turned out a whole lot better than I had expected, I mean I hoped for the best but feared the worst & I have to say I even quite liked certain parts of this. At this point I should also add that it has no connection to The Mangler 2 (2001) which doesn't feature any possessed laundry machines & is one of the worst films of all time. Clocking in at just under the 80 minute mark at least the film is short & to the point, although the story is undeniably silly as it revolves around a possessed laundry press but the script takes itself extremely seriously & tries to generate a fair amount of intensity which it is partially successful at. While watching The Mangler Reborn I couldn't help but be reminded of Wes Craven's excellent The People Under the Stairs (1991) with the plot about burglars breaking into a house, becoming trapped inside by the lunatic owners & facing all sorts of evil & danger. I thought the character's were better fleshed out & written than usual for a low budget horror, for instance when Mike discovers what is going on he actually tries to leave Jamie behind & save himself just like most people would in reality or at the end when Jamie escapes her room instead of just running she tries to lock the door trapping Watson inside & it just comes across like the character's are actually thinking & reacting like a proper person would. Well, that's what I thought anyway. The one big downer is that it gets fairly repetitive being set in the same house for the entirety of the film & the twist sequel driven ending isn't great after having the balls to kill everyone off including all the good guy's as well there's a ending which seems to contradict previous events in the film.Going straight-to-DVD I quite liked the simple way this was shot, there's no altering the speed of shot's, there's no colour bleaches or filters, there's no quick 'blink and you will miss it' editing & there's no shaky 'what's going on' hand-held camcorder photography. Basically you can see what's going on at all times & it's nice & clear which works for me. This is probably a bit gorier than the average straight-to-DVD low budget horror film & thankfully there's not a single horrible CGI computer effect in sight, a woman shoves her high heel shoe in someone's ear & there's a close-up as he pulls it out, there's a fair amount of blood splatter & some close-ups of people being put into the mangler & being stabbed & mangled. The mangler itself looks a bit silly as it has a conveyor belt lined with robotic style arms with knives attached.With a supposed budget of about $200,000 this is nothing more than competent & looks basic but at least you can see what's happening. Filmed in Los Angeles apparently. The acting is OK, a special mention goes to Aimee Brooks who is a very nice looking young lady if you know what I mean. Genre fans might recognise Reggie Bannister from the Phantasm series in which he plays Reggie.The Mangler Reborn turned out a whole lot better than I expected & with some fairly intense scenes, a very attractive leading lady & some decent gore I have to say this exceeded my expectations. It is certainly a lot better than The Mangler 2 & looks like Citizen Kane (1941) by comparison.

This movie is just plain awful... the acting is below most B-movies I've seen, the music can't be described properly (that's meant in a bad way), the effects are cheap as hell and the heroes / heroines are as stupid as they could be. Whoever wrote that plot should never ever be allowed to write anything again, nor should he / she have written this. That plot is completely stupid, the actors don't /can't help it, nor do the effects or the music.---*** SPOILER ***---This movie isn't even about a laundry machine like I thought. At least I can't think of a sensible reason to have a laundry machine that consists only of knives. That machine itself just looks stupid and cheap. With that any sense of terror that might have survived the stupidity of the victims is gone. The victims don't pick up keys. The first thing they do when they are "free" is running down and check the windows and doors, which would be alright, if they had not been told before by another victim that they are all bricked and locked. I think the windows and doors get checked four times in this movie. The most ridiculous part however was the first burglar that broke into the house and painfully tried to avoid seeing all the blood on the walls by coincidentally not looking. All in all the first half hour is full of people coincidentally not looking. And what's with that back door of the house, that magically opens when you give it a push from the outside, but won't budge when you pull from the inside?

Mangler Reborn took me by surprise after the poor original film and absolutely abysmal sequel. This film has little to do with the first and, happily, nothing to do with the second, which was an in-name-only sequel anyway. Basically, some repairman is piecing together parts of the original mangler machine in the spare room of his house when he is possessed by its spirit and forced to go out and get women to feed to the machine.Now, the film is not perfect, and, as you can tell by the other comments here, it is definitely not to every taste, but I enjoyed it. The low-budget actually works for the picture, giving it a gritty, realistic feel that is missing from many bigger budget flicks. Certain shots and scenes put me in mind of similar low-budget fare from the late 70s and early 80s, like: He Knows You're Alone, Don't Go In the House, Maniac and even, the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I'm not saying it's as good as any of those, simply that it put me in mind of them. Also, there is no humor here, thank God. I am over the need for humor to leaven the horror in these pictures. It was cute for a short while, but by Scream 3 and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, and the thousand other clones of this genre, I was over it. I don't want to hear one more villain or hero feel the need to utter a snarky pun or clever bon mot as they dispatch their victims. Enough already. I'm also pleased this is a true R rated film, like those previously mentioned. I'm done with PG-13 tripe featuring late teen and early twenties alumnae from the WB or CW networks. Stick to TV kids. The violence here is brutal and effectively photographed. Not for those who are squeamish.On the negative side, the film does drag in spots. I was grateful that I had the fast forward on my DVR a couple times, and the scenes can be a bit repetitive toward the end. The acting is hit and miss. I kind of liked the lead character. He didn't require a lot of facial expressions, but he was suitably creepy and frightening nonetheless. The female lead also did well, though some of the supporting cast were less than accomplished.While the end felt like a bit of a cheat, clearly opening the way for a sequel, it didn't spoil the rest of the film for me. For those who wonder why they don't make slasher movies like they used to, in the wake of Halloween and Friday the 13th, here you go.