Chopping Mall (dir. Jim Wynorski, 1986)
What isn’t there to love about Chopping Mall?
It’s directed by Jim Wynorski, the auteur behind such indelible classics as The Return of Swamp Thing, House IV, Ghoulies IV, and Busty Cops Go Hawaiian. It has all your favorite B-movie actors: Barbara Crampton; one of the leads from The Night of the Comet; that guy from Wynorski’s followup Deathstalker II; Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov reprising their roles from Eating Raoul for some reason; the legendary Dick Miller as Walter Paisley; and Bud the C.H.U.D. himself, Gerrit Graham, playing for the second time in his career a computer technician murdered by a rogue robot–and Chopping Mall is far more fun than Demon Seed. It’s full of the worst of 80s fashion. There’s a ludicrously overstocked gun store called Peckinpah’s. The title is a pun. IT’S 78 MINUTES LONG.
Sure, its title is misleading, because there’s no chopping to be found here. There are electrocutions, chokings, lasings, and head explosions aplenty, but these robots never chop. And yes, a shopping mall in the mid-80s using prototype killer machines, monitored nightly by a team of quickly murdered technicians is an extravagant waste of resources over a couple of security guards, but may I introduce you to Knightscope, Inc. who are doing the same thing in this hellscape we all live?
In conclusion: Chopping Mall is to 80s mall culture as Mallrats is to the 90s as Amazon derailing the US retail economy is to our dumb present.
October 1, 2018
oliveresque 