SALEM’S LOT is to THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE what THE MANGLER is to SALEM’S LOT.
Permit me to explain. Tobe Hooper never created anything that fully measured up to THE TEXAS CHAINSAW (nee CHAIN SAW) MASSACRE. That film was his magnum opus. But the closest he came to it—and he got pretty close—was the SALEM’S LOT television miniseries. (He also did the premiere episode of the TV series FREDDY’S NIGHTMARES that told the origin story of Freddy Krueger, and that was also fairly damn spectacular). So these two projects occupy the close—damn close—second rung on the ladder beneath TCM.
On the rung below *them* would be THE MANGLER. It’s more of a B-movie, sure, but so what? It’s a delicious B-movie. It’s about a possessed vampiric laundry press. How could any self-respecting Horror mark, and in particular a self-respecting vampire mark, not eat that up like ice cream? And, to bring it all full circle, sorta—more like full rhomboid, maybe (and if you need to google a rhomboid, you weren’t paying attention in geometry class—not that anyone could blame you)—THE MANGLER stars Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund!
Come to think of it, the Mangler would fit right in at Freddy’s boiler room.
