Entry 78: Chopping Mall (1986)

Chopping Mall (AKA Killbots, 1986)

Dir: Jim Wynorski

"Where shopping can cost you an arm and a leg."



Finally, a film that legitimizes my decision to do most of my shopping online...Remember your parking space and join me tonight as I leave the basement and take a trip to the Chopping Mall!
 
You know this was made in the 80s when it begins with a greasy mulletted dude in ripped jeans breaking into a jewelry store in a mall filled with ashtrays!  He's dispatched by a diminutive, treaded robot with a singular red eye (think a more sinister version of Johnny 5).  Cut to an applauding audience; turns out this is just a demonstration video put on by Secure-Tronics to demonstrate their new Protector-101 series security robots (as an amusing aside, Paul Bartell and Mary Woronov are in the audience reprising their roles as Paul and Mary Bland from Eating Raoul-"I don' t know, Mary; the one in the middle has an unpleasantly...'ethnic' quality."!).  The 101 units are set to undergo a trial run at a California mall, but when lightning strikes the mall the night of their debut, these killbots go crazy and begin slaughtering the overnight janitorial staff and a group of teenage employees (including Re-Animator's Barbara Crampton) who are partying after-hours.  The robots dispatch their victims using razor claws, electricity, flamethrowers and, in one extremely memorable scene, head-exploding laser blasts!     

Short and sweet (77 min.), Chopping Mall is never less than thoroughly entertaining.  Director Wynorski (Deathstalker II, The Return of Swamp Thing) fills the movie with his usual gratuitous T&A, dumb comic relief, excessive gore and plenty of in-jokes (references to Rambo, Terminator and Dawn of the Dead, a gun store called Peckinpah's, a movie-themed pizza restaurant decorated with posters from past Corman productions).  The young, enthusiastic cast is likable and seems to be having fun.  The robot effects by Robert Short (E.T., Star Trek: The Motion Picture) are fantastic.  Look for cameos from Corman regular Dick Miller (A Bucket of Blood, every goddamn Joe Dante movie) as a janitor and Gerrit Graham (Phantom of the Paradise, TerrorVision) as a doomed technician.