Chopping Mall

A treasure trove of teen movie clichés and outlandish murders, Chopping Mall is - and I'm as surprised as anyone - a lot of fun! It's well-paced, the action's good and these are likable characters. Not only that, but the Kill Bots themselves are kinda cool. You can tell pretty quickly which of the teens will step in at the last minute and be the hero, yet I was engaged throughout.

Part of the appeal is the setting; They used an actual location during production (the go-to Sherman Oaks Galleria in this case), so the mall culture is legitimate. It's a snapshot as well as the wish-fulfillment of having free rein in a mall after-hours. That can't be just me, right?

The premise is absurd and characteristically naughty, and that's all part of the charm.

Had all the boxes checked: cheesy dialogue, campy feel, bad acting, silly villain(s), gratuitous boob shot. It was just an entertaining 80 minutes. Please don't expect more out of that and I don't think you will.

Well, there is a whole lot of cheese in Chopping Mall. Remembering this movie from my childhood, I was compelled to rent it last night. Well, I am glad I did! Yeah, there isn't anything spectacular about the movie...There is a lot of Cheese (Automatic Rifles in a Mall?), but it still stands out as one of the better B-movies of the 80's.

The Robots are pretty decent looking. The acting is typical for the genre and timeframe. The head explosion scene is just classic.

I now feel compelled to track this down on Ebay, since I don't see an American DVD release anytime soon...

Rent it and just enjoy the actual quality to this b-movie. I don't mean the acting, but the scenery and the robots. The CGI is laughable...but, that is another topic...

7 out of 10

Teenagers are partying in a shopping mall late at night, and find themselves having to escape the latest in mall security: the Killbots. Sucks to be them, since the Killbots are armed with laser beams and C4 (in case some military commandos break in, I guess). I started laughing at the hilarious facial expressions of the second guy to get killed, and from that point on the movie was pure comedy. The silliness factor is out of control, with such things as a sporting goods store that just happens to have a few M-16s in stock, a couple watching TV while 6 people have sex in the background, a girl who wears her pants so tight that she has a huge you-know-what throughout the entire movie, a soundtrack inspired by Atari, a cameo by Dick Miller (whose entire career seems to be based on making cameos in B-movies), an exploding head, etc. Pretty crazy stuff.

CHOPPING MALL is one of those cheapies made in the 1980s that was probably green-lighted because of the expanding video market. Even though it was released theatrically, CHOPPING MALL looks more like a direct-to-video movie than anything else. The video I saw had a terrible transfer (out of focus and murky) and the cheesiness of it all could have made this a chore to sit through but even with those things going against it, the film was fun and fast paced. It's totally played for laughs and never takes itself seriously. The upbeat goofiness basically saves CHOPPING MALL from the usually unwatchable Concord/New World junk.

It's a definite minor Cult film.