CHOPPING MALL (1986)
It’s not you Ferdy, I guess I am just not used to getting chased in a mall in the middle of the night by killer robots.
Oh man, in this one a group of 20-something shopping mall employees stay behind, for a late-night make-out session. What better place than a furniture store at the mall in the ’80s? The mall closes and the newly installed robot security system goes live. These machines are designed to subdue anyone they are trying to apprehend so that the cops can be called. We are also given some freakin reason they were given lasers that the producers say can cut through anything. So there’s that. Needless to say PAUL BLART: MALL COP wasn’t available when this movie came out.
CHOPPING MALL has several recognizable faces for horror fans. Rick Staton is played by Russel Todd who was also in FRIDAY THE 13TH PART II. Alison Parks is played by Kelli Maroney, and Mary Bland played by Mary Woronov, are both from NIGHT OF THE COMET, and the legendary Dick Miller from pretty much everything including GREMLINS and NIGHT OF THE CREEPS. So for a low-budget horror flick, this movie was jam-packed with performances from fan favorites.
Unfortunately, it didn’t take off at the box office but does have a huge cult following. Part of the issue might have been that wacky poster with one of the machines holding a shopping bag of body parts. Needless to say, there is NONE of that happening in this movie and we actually never see anything “chopped”. That isn’t to say this movie doesn’t have its kill scenes and a fair share of 80’s horror movie mayhem. What also probably didn’t help was that the movie was shown to audiences as “KILLBOTS” first and that pretty much bombed, so it was re-released a year later as CHOPPING MALL, which also flopped, but was a way cooler name. It’s likely the concept of a killer robot was built from SHORT CIRCUIT and just reversing the idea and having the robot or robots never turn nice.
For fans of 80’s horror, this movie should be on the must-see list, but I would have liked to see more character development and dialog (this version had 15 minutes cut out from the original KILLBOTS release). We do get some, but it would have been nice to care about these characters just a bit more. Even for a horror movie you kinda want at least some decent interaction between the characters. Also, we get a soundtrack that is definitely 80’s but could have been a ton better given all the awesome music choices of the day.
This flick captures that 80’s horror feel and look brilliantly and in my opinion, should have been a bigger hit. It would have been cool to see a series of these things rather than the stand-alone effort we have to settle for. Given its budget, this thing is just stellar, but I like it, even more, knowing they didn’t have a ton to work with and just made this thing happen.
I give CHOPPING MALL a 6 OUT OF 7. Definitely, one I need to have on my Halloween playlist every October.
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