10 Most Disappointing Stephen King Movies

10. The Mangler

It’s not every week that Tobe Hooper directs a King adaptation starring Robert Englund, but The Mangler is an unspeakable horror whose very existence disproves the possibility of a tender and merciful God. Given the calibre of talent behind the film, you’d expect more than a fast-and-cheap exploitation movie.

Slung together with all the grace of a movie intended to be filler for late-night TV, the picture squanders one of King’s best early short stories in favour of gore and cheap shocks. In the wrong hands, the premise of a haunted laundry press was never going to work, but the absence of logic results in a film that’s never less than ridiculous.

You can’t blame Englund, who’s pretty good as the laundry’s twitchy owner, nor should outraged viewers direct their ire at Hooper. He was fired during production and replaced with another, uncredited director.