Saturday, June 4, 2011

Chopping Mall (1986)

I love the mall.  Being from upstate New York, I worked at the mall on several different occasions and I remember all the delights and horrors that come with that place.  I especially love the mall in the 80s.  The 80s were just kind of a crazy time all around and that was really reflective in the mall.  Fashion was wild, Papa Gino's was a hot place to eat, and there were cookie stands instead of Auntie Anne's.

Chopping Mall is based on kind of a ludicrous premise, but that makes it all the more enjoyable.  Some security firm has created robots that can patrol the mall and "neutralize" any criminals that are robbing the mall after closing time.  Was this a rampant problem in 80s?  So much so that we needed to create special robots just for mall patrol.  You learn something new every day.

The robots are supposed to protect the workers at the mall by requiring identification and not taking them as criminals.  But something, seemingly to do with lightning, has gone terribly wrong and the robots are malfunctioning.  This wouldn't be a problem if the mall was empty, but there is a group of workers partying and sexing it up in a furniture store after hours.  When the robots find them, they go on the attack and attempt to pick them off one by one.

The story behind this movie was fun, and although the effects were not perfect, the deaths were pretty cool.  The music was at a Tangerine Dream-awesome level, that unfortunately stuck in my head after the movie ended.  The acting is truly 80s, complete with exaggerated everything, from facial expressions to screaming to that glorious crimped hair.

Chopping Mall is an original concept and a fun time.  Seeing the robots ride the escalator and flail their arms around like E.T. made my horror-hardened heart sing with glee.  Yay 80s!

photo source

1 comments:

Chris R said...

One of the better head-explosion scenes from the 80s, too!