Robert Englund

After a laundry worker is injured and another fatally squashed, her blood, guts and brains oozing from between the giant metal rollers of a hulking Hadley Watson Model-6 Steamer Ironer and Folder, an investigator mutters, "It's almost like that machine had tasted blood and liked it."

Bingo! This malevolent mass of metal resides in a Dickensian laundry run by an evil old coot (Englund, hidden behind layers of latex even thicker than his Freddy Krueger makeup in the Nightmare on Elm Street films). He's eager to provide the machine with McMortal meals.

There's naught to recommend in Mangler (based on a Stephen King story) other than—and you should be ashamed if this is what you want—its many gory shots of arms, heads and bodies being crushed and, my personal favorite, a dying man hocking bloody sputum directly onto the camera lens. (R)