30 Years Ago, A Stephen King Box Office Bomb Started An Unlikely Horror Franchise

(Welcome to Tales from the Box Office, our column that examines box office miracles, disasters, and everything in between, as well as what we can learn from them.)

"Now, people seem to get the humor ... then, they didn't." Those are the words screenwriter Stephen David Brooks speaking in a 2022 interview with the YouTube channel "Pennywise Etc." Brooks was speaking about 1995's "The Mangler," an ill-fated big-screen adaptation of Stephen King's short story of the same name. Intended to be something of a horror/comedy, it simply confused audiences in its day, with critics giving it little to no love at the time either.

Usually, unsuccessful movies either disappear into obscurity or find their audience down the road. In most cases, either way, sequels are off the table. Rare cases such as "Blade Runner" eventually giving way to "Blade Runner 2049," which became a cautionary tale rather than a resounding success, do crop up from time to time. In this case, a flat-out critical and commercial flop somehow managed to spawn a three-movie franchise, serving as quite probably the most unlikely franchise based on King's work to ever come about.

In this week's Tales from the Box Office, we're looking back at "The Mangler" in honor of its 30th anniversary. We'll go over how the film came to be, how it brought several horror icons under one roof, the promise that existed in the packed that was put together by New Line Cinema, what happened when the movie hit theaters, what happened in the years after its disastrous release, and what we can learn from it all these years later. Let's dig in, shall we?

The film as we know it centers on workers at the Blue Ribbon Laundry who have been having a suspicious number of deaths. These deaths are being caused by a hulking piece of machinery known as "The Mangler." Police Officer John Hunton (Ted Levine) begins to investigate and discovers that the laundry's owner, Bill Gartley (Robert Englund) has purposely been sacrificing young virgins to the possessed machinery to maintain the prosperity of the town's elders.

"When my brother David and I were kids, our mother worked on the speed-ironer at the Stratford Laundry, in Stratford, Connecticut," King explained in his book "Stephen King Goes to the Movies" of his inspiration for the short story. "She told us that the machine, which the crew called the mangler, was dangerous. I remember thinking, 'With a name like that, how could it not be?'"

The story ended up as part of the "Night Shift" collection, which is one of King's most beloved books. Several of those stories have inspired films over the years, including "Children of the Corn" and "Graveyard Shift," among others. Speaking further in "Goes to the Movies," King detailed the inspiration for Bill Gartley, which came to him when he began working at a laundry as one of his first jobs.

"One of the floor foremen, Harry Cross, had hooks instead of hands to prove it. One Saturday during World War II, he fell into it while it was running. Hence the hooks, which he occasionally held under the men's room taps (left hook equaled HOT, right hook equaled COLD) and then put on the backs of unsuspecting mangle-girls' necks."

"Given my habit of imagining the worst, it's not so surprising that I would imagine a vampire mangler," King added.

The film was set up at New Line Cinema, aka "The House that Freddy Built." That's because the studio was essentially saved by 1984's "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and the many sequels it spawned. Perhaps it's not surprising that they got Robert Englund, the man behind Freddy Krueger, to star as Bill Gartley. They also wrangled Ted Levine, who was coming hot off of the success of "The Silence of the Lambs," having memorably played Buffalo Bill.

Behind the camera, "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" director Tobe Hooper was tapped to helm the adaptation. Hooper had previously adapted King's "Salem's Lot" into a well-regarded miniseries, one that the author was fond of. In short, this movie was lousy with horror legends, tackling promising source material. What could possibly go wrong?

Hooper co-wrote the screenplay with Brooks. King's story is intended to be a bit campy, and by all accounts, Hooper understood that. Translating that effectively for audiences? That's another thing entirely. The titular "Mangler" was built for real in a warehouse in South Africa, with much of the movie's visual effects accomplished practically. This was the relatively early days of CGI and there is some digital VFX work in the film, for better or worse.

"The movie's visuals are surreal and the sets are eye-popping, but somewhere along the way (maybe in the copious amounts of steam generated by the film's mechanical star), the story gets lost," King said in "Goes to the Movies" of the adaptation. "There were some edits that were made that we weren't happy about that really altered the entire movie," Brooks said in that same "Pennywise Etc" interview. 

Trouble behind the scenes, creative disagreements. It's a story that's been told 1,000 times over. It almost never makes for a good final product. King distilled the resulting film in his book thusly:

"When genius goes wrong, brother, watch out. The film version of 'The Mangler' is energetic and colorful, but it's also a mess with Robert (Freddy Krueger) Englund stalking through it for reasons which remain unclear to me even now."

The folks at New Line Cinema decided to market Hooper's take on King's story as a straight-up horror affair. It's worth pointing out that slashers were having a rough time in the mid-'90s and wouldn't be fully revived until Wes Craven's smash hit "Scream" arrived in 1996. The title "The Mangler," coupled with the marketing, made it seem like a slasher. That certainly didn't help, nor was it made explicitly clear that audiences were in for a movie about a killer laundry folding machine. It wasn't exactly set up for success.

"The Mangler" hit theaters on March 3, 1995 and, to put it bluntly, was dead on arrival. The movie debuted at number 17 on the charts with a measly $933,809 on 800 screens. To put things into context, another King adaptation, "The Shawshank Redemption," made more on its 24th weekend ($1.4 million). It certainly didn't help that critics of the day were far from kind to Hooper's movie. In any event, it dropped like a rock in its second weekend and was out of theaters shortly thereafter.

As Variety explained in June 1995, overseas distributors also "buried" the movie after it turned out to be a "loser." With that, "The Mangler" finished its theatrical run with just $1.7 million domestically. While the budget has not been disclosed, New Line spent $8 million in '94 on Wes Craven's "New Nightmare," which also disappointed theatrically, so one has to assume this one was made for a comparable amount. It was a disaster.

Or was it ...?

What's remarkable about horror movies is that, more than any other genre out there, the audience seeks these things out. Having King and Hooper's name attached to "The Mangler," not to mention Englund and Levine's, helped bring attention to it beyond that extremely limited theatrical run. Keep in mind, home video was a far more powerful tool in the '90s and early 2000s. Just look at the "Hellraiser" franchise. Flopping in theaters wasn't a death sentence if we're talking about a movie with a manageable budget.

That's probably why, against the odds, writer/director Michael Hamilton-Wright brought us "The Mangler 2" in 2002. Released direct-to-video and having virtually nothing to do with the original, it starred Lance Henriksen ("Aliens") in the lead role. Again, the movie was eviscerated by critics but its mere existence revealed that, in some way, the tide had turned for "The Mangler." Even more amazing? The DTV sequel did well enough for Lionsgate to justify 2005's "The Mangler Reborn," which was more of an alternate sequel to the original directed by Erik Gardner and Matt Cunningham.

Again, reviews were terrible but all the same, a flop by every measure somehow gave life to an entire trilogy. Even more amazing, viewers have discovered the original film in the ensuing years and have offered something of a reappraisal. Arrow Video even released a special edition Blu-ray in 2022, which one can find pretty easily on Amazon. Even some those involved view it kindly, in hindsight.

"I think Tobe Hooper did a real interesting job on Stephen King's 'The Mangler," Englund said in a 2023 interview with /Film. "I think that's kind of rising now in all of the adaptations of Stephen King. Maybe it's better than some of the earlier ones that were done."

To say that "The Mangler" is not considered one of the best Stephen King movies would be an understatement. Still, it's a movie that has clearly found some sort of an audience in the three decades since its initial release. That has to count for something. "I maintain it's still the best short story you will ever read in which a laundry machine escapes on pressing business," King mused of "The Mangler" in "Goes to the Movies." He probably has a point.

Those things don't always translate to screen, even with all of the talent in the world. What helped in this case was New Line making a reasonably budgeted genre picture. Had this been a big-budget affair, it'd be a different story. A sequel might have been on the table. Even the notorious flop "R.I.P.D." got a direct-to-video sequel, so anything can make sense at the right budget level. But a full-on franchise was built on the back of this particular bomb. It's nothing if not a little impressive.

Horror has a unique way of almost never being lost to time, even in the streaming era. Other genres aren't often afforded this reassessment that can help slashers and the like find new life. In this case though, the sore thumb is a clear miscommunication when it came to the vision for this adaption. Hooper and Brooks understood that they needed to balance horror and comedy to make this work. New Line didn't do them (or audiences for that matter) any favors by pulling a bait and switch with the marketing.

Am I suggesting "The Mangler" is good? I wouldn't go that far, but I am saying trusting a vision rather than betraying it might have served everyone better. A great many other movies with squandered potential have suffered similar fates. It's easier said than done, but trusting the process rather than getting cold feet appears to be the better option in these situations.