Chopping Mall (1986)

"Chopping Mall" (1986) was directed by Jim Wynorski and produced by Julie Corman, the wife of B-Movie mogul Roger Corman.

The film is about 4 teenage couples who hide in a mattress store in a mall until after closing so that they can make out on the beds and party. But... the mall is patrolled by 3 security robots armed with lasers and other gadgets. After an electrical storm fries the robot's circuits which turns them into killers, the teens, with no way to escape the mall, end up battling these robots for their lives.

The movie poster is very misleading... it makes it look like the film is straight up horror and that a humanoid style robot is chopping people into bits. This is far from what happens in this film.

Nobody gets chopped into pieces and put into shopping bags. And the robots are not humanoid looking at all.

Even the tag line from the poster "Buy or die... half off is just the beginning" has nothing to do with what happens with this film. The movie was later released on home video as "Killbots" which is a much better title for the film and the Killbots poster better told what to expect from the film.

The robots looked like the one pictured here...

They were short and had tank treads to get around on.

The heads had these big red scanners that would allow them to see and target enemies.

They also shot lasers, tranq darts, electricity and they had arms with strong clamps that could do some pretty good damage. There were three of them, each assigned a specific floor of the mall to patrol, but they were not restricted to those floors.

The teenage couples in the film were there mainly to have sex and add nudity to the film and give the robots something to kill. Lol. There was no character development and you really have no attachments to the characters whatsoever. I was rooting for the robots the whole time.

After the quick sex scenes and topless nudity the movie quickly jumps straight to the chase... literally.

The kids are immediately being chased throughout the mall by these robots.

The teens watch a robot kill their friend by shooting her with a laser causing her head to completely explode. The best kill shot of the movie!

This kill takes place right in front of the mattress store as the teens watch helplessly! The rest of the movie is the teens running and hiding from the robots and getting picked off one at a time by these machines while trying to come up with a plan to take out the robots and escape.

Lets talk a minute about the cast...

The teens were Kelli Maroney (Night of the Comet / Fast Times at Ridgemont High,) Tony O'Dell (The Karate Kid, ) Russell Todd (Friday the 13th Part 2,) Karrie Emerson, Barbara Crampton (Re-animator,) Nick Segal (Breakin' 2,) Suzee Slater and John Terlesky.

Like I said earlier, no real character development and bad cheesy acting.

Overall, the film was poorly written and the special effects are very dated and the acting is horrible. But... this is the kind of flick I love. It is definitely a great film to play for your bad movie night. I'm sure you and your friends will have a great time with this one.

I have to post this shot... It's the chick's head exploding after being hit by a laser that one of the robot fires.  Just plain awesome!

Thanks for reading my review!

Talk to you soon!

- Patrick Shawn Bennett

Movies by the Slice (with extra cheese!)