Synopsis: It’s the cutting edge security force for consumer America, a trio of robots with a variety of non-lethal assault powers (sleep darts, Tasers) and a laser that allows them to cut through barriers in their way. Robbers, vandals, and other crooks don’t stand a chance against these buggers! However, when they are debuting on the evening of a lightning storm, well, all hell is going to break loose . . . This is unfortunate news for a group of sexy young mall employees and a grease monkey couple who have decided to stay after hours to have a little party. Soon enough, the robots run amok using their lasers (and sleep darts and high voltage Tasers) in ways the manufacturer never intended, and the body count escalates. Co-writer and director Jim Wynorski had successfully made one movie before he got the chance to helm 1986’s Chopping Mall, but this feature is a definite crowd pleaser of b-movie mania and robot madness. When someone does the robot here, they’re inviting a nasty end!
DANIEL’S TAKE
Any movie with both Dick Miller and Barbara Crampton in it needs no more reason for me to check it out. Neither of these actors lasts from the beginning frame to the final (light spoiler, I suppose) but they nevertheless gives this production their best efforts and the results are memorable. Make no mistake, this is not a down and dirty horror flick, it’s a funny, sometimes gross, wonderfully campy b-movie about a bunch of idjits with their brains in their genitals stuck inside a mall with killer robots. Not high art, but caught in the right circumstances (as I did in the tail end of June in a packed theater here in Houston), it can be a hellaciously fun time. Let’s dive deep, shall we?
The picture opens with a young punk (one of the good looking dudes with studly wardrobe) bashing open a window with the butt of a revolver. How did he get in the mall so late? He’s a crook! Crooks can BE ANYWHERE! Just ask the news. He scoops up the jewelry and runs off, worried that the local tub-o’-lard mall cop might happen along, I suppose, but instead he finds himself face-to-face with a trashcan on treads adorned with gripping arms and little covered slots that reveal blowgun tubes that launch a variety of things. Well, before you can say dead bang, dude is laid out with a jolt of high electricity and ends up on the floor. BAM!
What we have been watching is, in fact, a short advertisement video for the brand new mall cops: ED-209’s little brother. Not really, since this picture and 1987’s Robocop have different parentage/production companies after all, so the similarities are purely satiric. Actually, it turns out Robocop came out after Chopping Mall (which was originally released as Killbots and bombed in theaters), so the similarities are striking! And maybe telling . . .
Anyway, when an audience (including cheeky character actors Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov) quiz the creator about the lethality, the plucky scientist says, “What can possibly go wrong?”
Well, plenty. Is it a lightning storm glitch? Are the Killbots waking up spontaneously and in the need to kill, kill, kill? This is not quite explained. However, they decide to off their two shifts of handlers (including Gerrit Graham, who also appeared with Mary Woronov in Terrorvision in 1986) and then head down into the mall to encounter an irascible janitor called Walter Paisley (Dick Miller, reprising a role he played in 1959’s Bucket of Blood) before moving on to tackle a bunch of teens. Needless to say, this movie is a treasure trove of filmic Easter eggs before such things existed. Hell, the book Graham’s character is reading, They Came From Outer Space, is an anthology edited by Wynorski featuring the stories that inspired a bunch of cult horror/sf movies.
Anyway, enter the pretty young things: Alison (Kelli Maroney) and Ferdy (Tony O’Dell) are the sweet ones, smart and not into nude scenes, Rick (Russell Todd) and Linda (Karrie Emerson) are married mechanics who like to get it on at parties; emotional Suzie (the always watchable Barbara Crampton), passionate Greg (Nick Segal), gum-cracking wiseass Mike (John Terlesky), and spoiled gal Leslie (Suzee Slater) fill out the cast of potential victims. They have quirks to keep them separate, and they each get at least one good line to deliver. However, they run around and cry on command and freak out as needed—that’s their real role in the flick, after all.
Well, the robots have a field day because, when curfew strikes, a series of bomb blast steel doors close off the mall until 6am. Everyone has to survive until dawn against a seemingly unstoppable menace. What do they do? Well, when not suffering either cheesy laser special effects or at least one gnarly exploding head bit, they arm themselves from the mall sporting goods store (of course a place called Peckinpah’s has assault rifles as well as Dirty Harry style revolvers and your standard shotguns) and try to take the fight to the bots.
Well, that goes about as well as you might expect. Cue more running, more mayhem, as the cast whittles down to the final girl (daughter of a marine, so she can kick ass as needed) who manages to save herself as she struggles to single-handedly defeat the last of the machines.
There’s surprisingly little chopping in Chopping Mall. Although the title might suggest, oh, chainsaws or scalpels or fire ax wielding machines, none of those are included. Instead, we have lasers and ‘lectricity. The title was of course an attention grabber, accompanied by some eye-catching box art for the video release. All told, it’s more grabby than the original Killbots, and yet it feels like cheating when not even one of the victims gets, you know, actually chopped up. That’s the pedant in me, of course. I suppose these bots have axes to grind (cue groan!), and maybe that’s enough to carry the movie.
The plotting is as expected. The kills are sometimes creative, but mostly pew-pew-pew. However, the movie’s sense of humor saves it from being just another dead teenager flick. “I guess I’m just not used to getting chased through a shopping mall by killer robots!” Linda explains to her boyo when he cannot understand why she’s freaking out. One would think this does not need to be said, but this is the kind of movie that takes the opportunity anyway. It’s played for laughs, and there are plenty of laughs to be had in the dialogue. A few unintentional bits at the low budget decisions. The audience I saw it with seemed to enjoy the hell out of the picture, and I know I did as well.
As B-movies from the 80s go, there are worst things to watch. It’s one of Concorde Pictures’ releases, meaning it falls under Roger Corman’s distribution (Concorde was one of his companies), and his wife gets a producer credit, which is fun. Though the plot is not smart, the film nevertheless is: as I mentioned before, it’s a smorgasbord of inside jokes, tips of the hat, and nods to other flicks. I applaud Wynorski’s zeal in this, his second picture. A better edited release than some of his subsequent flicks (looking at you, Scalps!), and one that has aged if not gracefully than certainly forgivably. It’s goofy when it needs to be, a tad suspenseful when it bothers trying, and fun watching.
Director Jim Wynorski seems to be channeling Joe Dante, here, with the requisite love of old black and white horror/science fiction, plenty of classic actors, and plenty of insider nudges. Although Chopping Mall may not be as slick as The Howling (1981) or Piranha (1978), it aspires to be in the same league as those features. For the most part, it succeeds in doing so.
I came for Barbara Crampton and Dick Miller, and I stayed for the rest of the flick, laughing at the outrageousness and the silliness and the camp. There are way worse ways to spend 90 minutes, than this pleasure.
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Chopping Mall is available in DVD, Blu-ray and streaming editions. Worth a watch for those who love ’80s b-movies and campy horror pics. Also, worth a look for those wondering about those trashcan robots that are currently performing security functions in a California mall right now . . .
Next up, we will stick with the 80s pastimes and check in with Death Spa (1989), a strange little flick that shows what really goes on in a high end health spa . . . That flick is hard to come by, but maybe not impossible. Is it worth hunting down in VHS? Find out next time!
“SHOCKtober Movies: Chopping Mall” is copyright © 2019 by Daniel R. Robichaud. Poster and still image taken from IMDB.
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