Chopping Mall (1986)

Chopping Mall (1986)
Watched May 31, 2009

SYNOPSIS
Promiscuous teens are hunted down by mall security robots malfunctioning after their computer is struck by lightning.

SHORT REVIEW
"Chopping Mall" is a hell of a lot of fun; nothing more, nothing less.

REVIEW
I've wanted to see "Chopping Mall" for a while now, solely because that title is fucking amazing. I'm putting it bluntly, but it is. Just like "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes", if you're not intrigued by the title "Chopping Mall", you obviously are an emotionless robot. You can still read this blog, though, I don't really care if my readers are robots, it's better than no readers at all.

Enough about robots! Now we'll set our sights on "Chopping Mall", which is conveniently also about robots. Killer robots at that. The film starts out with a company showing off their new security robots to mall employees. The maker of these robots claims "the system is foolproof" and "nothing, absolutely nothing, can go wrong" and goes on to repeat these claims multiple times. Needless to say, something goes wrong.

In this case, electricity hits the roof of the mall three times in a row, conveniently in the place that the robots' computer system is located. Why the hell would the computer system be located on the roof? Just one of many questions that are never answered in "Chopping Mall", but I couldn't care less.

Meanwhile, while the robots kill the people looking after them, who were too busy looking at porn to notice that the robots were alive when they shouldn't have been, eight teens are doing it in a mattress shop after-hours! They picked the right night to party! The teens are all complete cut-outs. We have the newly formed couple that are the two good people, who would rather watch "Attack of the Crab Monsters" than do it. Within seconds of meeting these two, you know they're going to be the only ones to survive the night. The other six have no distinguishable personality traits, and are only there to provide nudity and a higher body count. Sounds like it's gonna be a good time!

I mentioned in my "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" review that there were exploding heads in this movie. And I wasn't lying. One of the horny teens gets their head blown apart by the security robot's lasers! Why the hell would a security robot need lasers strong enough to explode someone's head? Man, that's really weird, the lyrics to the song I'm listening to were just "I don't care! I don't care!", which basically sums up my feelings to that question. If "Deadly Friend" can get away with basketballs exploding heads, "Chopping Mall" can get away with deadly lasers. By the way, the head explosion was good enough to warrant me rewinding the movie to watch it again.

Other than that head explosion, which was also pretty bloodless, there's no blood in "Chopping Mall", which you wouldn't expect from a film with that kind of title. But that's fine. The death scenes here are primarily laser-based, as that's the robots' main line of defense. I don't think the company's presentation on the robots mentioned lasers. I love how I'm pointing out how illogical a film called "Chopping Mall" is. Anyways, back to bloodletting, yeah, very little blood. But, the film is just so darned entertaining, I didn't need any.

Did I mention the film is 77 minutes long? Quick and to the point, just how I liked it. A perfect contrast with "Baby Jane". The film wastes no time getting to the action, as the first kill is like ten minutes in, then we get some quick boob shots and then we have just under an hour of teens getting thrown off of balconies and getting blown up by lasers. Exactly what everyone wants in their 80s horror. Man, I love the 80s.

The film never drags, and is entertaining from start to finish. It realizes it's nothing more than a crappy slasher with robots, and finishes off all the death scenes with the robots happily wishing the victims a nice day. How nice. I don't think I can bring myself to give this movie five chainsaws, as it's pretty much awful in every sense of the word, but I can give "Chopping Mall" a highly acceptable 4 chainsaws, and I'll throw in a slab of cheese for good measure. Go see it right now. Unless you're a robot, then you may find the film insulting to your race. But probably not.


4 out of 5 chainsaws and then a nice piece of cheese for no reason other than I've never given a film a rating made out of cheese (VERY GOOD, SEE IT)