[The stories of Night Shift] all begin in our normal world, where everything is safe and warm. But in almost every instance, something slips, and we find ourselves in the nightmare world of the not-quite real. (p. 6)

Such stories require a willing suspension of disbelief, of course, but they also require an author who is an expert manipulator, one who can make horror seem not only plausible but almost logical. King is an expert, and many of these stories will not be easily forgotten…. Perhaps ["The Mangler"] is the best example of King's skill at what he does. The idea of a steam ironer possessed by a demon seems laughable, but no one who reads "The Mangler" is going to laugh for very long. (pp. 6-7)

Bill Crider, in Best Sellers (copyright © 1978 Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation), April, 1978.

Striking a far less hysterical tone than in The Shining...