When it comes to horror movies during the 1980s one word usually comes to mind: cheesy. Of course not all of the horror to come out during this time were cheesy, in fact some of the best horror films ever made came out during this decade. The Thing, The Shining, Inferno, among others are proof that this beloved decade was just as good on the serious side. CHOPPING MALL is a totally different story.
CHOPPING MALL takes place almost entirely inside of a large shopping mall, where mall management has enlisted the aid of three security robots to roam the halls and "detain" trespassers. Most tenants of the mall are skeptical as to how well these robots will function. Well, it only takes one thunderstorm and bolt of lightning to send these robots, who look like Johnny 5 on steroids, into a frenzy.
On this night, several teens/young adults are planning on partying in one of their dad's furniture stores. Everything seems to being going fine until the lightning strikes the mall sending a jolt of power to the robots, and turning them into killing machines. They start with computer programmers in the annals of the mall, before they break out in to the mall proper. As soon as they get into the mall they find a janitor to harass, and kill.
The rest of the movie strays very little from typical slasher movie formula. The "bad" kids go down first, including a girl with a great head explosion scene, and its a stalk-and-chase scenario. The group arms themselves with guns from the sporting good store and Molotov cocktails made from cans of gasoline. Eventually it comes down to a one-on-one showdown of man (woman) vs. robot in the paint store in an... err, umm... explosive finale.
CHOPPING MALL is not well made, the editing is just bad in many areas, and the dialogue is suspect as in most movies of this breed. But we don't watch movies like CHOPPING MALL for the quality of film making, we watch it to see robots attack humans, we watch it to see lasers being shot and heads exploding. We watch it to see these robots who are only supposed to detain trespassers somehow gain all sorts of new abilities through out the movie. We watch it to have FUN!
And that's what CHOPPING MALL is. Pure. Cheesy. Fun.
7/10
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