I wish I could say that we saved the best for last, but if you've read anything here you should know by now that Night Shift is guilty of inflicting the world with some of the worst Stephen King adaptations ever. The Mangler definitely scrapes the bottom, with some out-of-left-field humor being one of the movie's few saving graces. This review will be shorter than most, only because I watched this over a month ago and just couldn't work up the inspiration to give it a thorough recap.
Having watched this on the heels of reading Roadwork, I can only assume Stephen King had some unpleasant experiences with industrial laundry facilities. While in Roadwork, it was just an unpleasant place to work, in this story it is home to a terrifying machine that eats people when properly "woke". But this is no Exorcist knock-off, as John and his occult-knowledgeable brother-in-law discover the hard way; the machine works on antacids! I should say antacids and body-part and virgin sacrifices. Sure, why not.
Like many of the other adaptations from Night Shift, this movie also suffers from trying to pad a substance-lite story. The machine monster is stuffed full of CGI and the blood spray effect is in full use, making the movie's tone more violent and thrilling than the mysterious and lower-key one of the original story. Then again, if you have Tobe Hooper in the director's chair, you're probably expecting something a least a little bit gross.
Needless to say this movie bombed pretty hard and further diminished Tobe Hooper's already-sagging fortunes as a horror-movie icon. Speaking of horror-movie icons, Robert Englund gets top billing in this movie even though he isn't in it a whole lot, although I'll grudgingly admit his portrayal of a disgusting old disabled owner of the Laundry Shop of Horrors is pretty good.
