Big Hair, Bigger Scares: Revisiting 80s Horror - Chopping Mall

When I was a kid, I had this poster on my wall for years. My dad got it from a friend and thought it was okay to give to his 12-year-old kid. I loved the look of it: the body parts piled into a paper bag with the screaming face poking out, and the robotic hand holding it up. I couldn’t believe such gore could be on a movie poster! I felt like I was getting away with something by hanging it up. The only problem was I had never seen the movie. I doubted my parents would have let me back then even if they gave me the poster. As an adult, I never went back to watch it either. It’s about time I remedied that!

Releasing to theaters on March 14, 1986, Chopping Mall is about a robotic mall security force going crazy and murdering people locked inside the shopping center after closing. Just like in Short Circuit, a lightning strike reprograms the robots only in reverse this time, turning peaceful robots into bloodthirsty killers. 

Unlike on the poster with a robotic humanoid hand holding the bag, the robots in the film look more like a futuristic version of Tik-Tok, the robot from Return to Oz but with tank treads. They also have four of these weird little arms that don’t look like they can do much, which were made by production out of grabber tools kids love playing with. They’re equipped with your usual police gear like tasers, but also have some very weird upgrades. At one point, they excrete some white fluid onto door hinges from their hands and ignite it with their tasers, causing it to explode like some kind of liquid C4. 

The movie starts with a demonstration of the Protectors, as the robots are called, and their capabilities to a crowd of… store owners in the mall? They don’t really explain who these people are, especially a really snarky pair in the front row. Someone smartly asks what’s to keep employees from getting tased and is shown that their clunky ID badges can be scanned by the robots. They also show off the mall’s other security feature; big metal doors that lock the mall down at night or in case of an emergency. 

Elsewhere in the mall, waitress Allison is invited to a party by coworker Suzie. They work in a weird diner that looks like it has no place in a mall. The cook is covered in food stains, looking like Barth from You Can’t Do That on Television. In a furniture store, local nerd Ferdy is invited to the same party by coworkers Mike and Greg. They plan to stay in the store after closing, unaware that the robotic defense force has just killed two of its operators in the security office. Another couple, Rick and Linda, shows up from nowhere along with Mike’s girlfriend, Leslie. Greg and Suzie make up the last couple, leaving Ferdy and Allison to awkwardly watch a movie while everyone else is getting freaky. True to 80s horror movie form, there’s plenty of gratuitous nudity here.

As Mike goes to buy some cigarettes (it’s so weird to see a cigarette dispenser in a mall), the robots go on patrol. Protector 1 approaches him and even after showing off his ID card, Mike gets tased, followed up by the robot grabbing him by the throat with that tiny hand. Leslie, perturbed she doesn’t have her smokes yet, goes out to on a search and finds him with his throat slit open way worse than what we saw earlier. Protector 1 bursts through a door (which it has no way of opening) and chases her down, showing off another defense system, a cartoon laser shot out of its visor. It chases Leslie back to the store, shooting her in the back, but the shots don’t seem to do anything to her. That is until one blast blows up her freaking head right in front of her friends. Hilariously, after every kill, the robots repeat its lone programmed line – “Have a nice day.”

That head-exploding scene is easily the best thing about this movie. It’s even repeated in the credits – while the main cast gets a shot of them smiling, her name shows up right as her head pops. Freaking amazing. But there’s plenty more bodily harm on the way, as Protectors 1 and 2 storm the furniture store to get the rest of the partiers. The girls escape the store through an air duct, but the robots break in before the boys can follow. Now split up, the two groups of survivors go on the offensive; the guys get guns at a sporting store (another crazy thing to see in a mall), and the girls build molotovs in a home supplies store. The guns don’t have any effect on Protector 1, so they blow up a propane tank in front of it.

Protector 2 hunts the girls, but the molotovs prove to be as useless as bullets. Suzie gets shot in the butt and falls down but can’t get back. The robot shoots the gas can with its laser, lighting Suzie up but somehow not the floor around her. The survivors trap the robot in an elevator and detonate an improvised bomb, killing it. Protector 1, who survived the propane tank explosion, shows up and chases them again. Ferdy suggests going to the third floor to shut off the robot’s control center, but when Greg gets to the top of the escalator, Protector 3 is waiting for him and throws him off the balcony, killing him.

One thing to note here is that the movie is shot inside a real mall, the Sherman Oaks Galleria. They had full run of the mall at night as long as everything was cleaned up by opening time. That included all the fire, broken glass, and fake blood. I don’t even know how they managed to do the fire without leaving a trace. Maybe they had Dick Miller clean it up: the Gremlins star and frequent Roger Corman collaborator stars as a put-upon janitor and the Protectors’ first victim, electrocuted through some disgusting mop water. While Roger Corman wasn’t directly attached to the film, his wife Julie directed it.

Let’s get back to the Killbots (which is the movie’s original title). At this point, Ferdy, Allison, and the other couple, Rick and Linda, are holed up in a clothing store, using mirrors to trick the Protectors into shooting themselves with their own lasers. Protector 3 is hit and goes nuts, spinning around and accidentally striking Linda in the stomach, killing her. In a rage, Rick hits the robot with a slow-moving cart and is electrocuted right before the robot explodes.

Protector 1 corners Allison in a hallway, but Ferdy comes to the rescue, showing that the robots aren’t entirely immune to bullets when he shoots it in the head and shorts out the laser. Ferdy gets knocked to the ground for his trouble, a head wound bleeding onto the floor. Allison high-tails it into a paint store and sets up a trap for the robot, spilling chemicals all over the floor. The robot chases her in, gets stuck in all the paint and she throws a flare she stole earlier in the film, blowing the robot up. And hey, Ferdy lived after all!

If I had seen this as a kid, I’m not sure I would have been disappointed or not. By today’s standards, the robots are completely laughable, but would I have thought the same back then? Johnny 5 was the pinnacle of movie robots, and that came out only 6 months before this. Would I consider the exploding head and early boobage enough to save the film? It certainly has its charm as a technology-run-amok horror film, the cast does a good job, and the kill count is satisfying in human and robot terms. Best of all, it’s got me hunkering to watch some other horror movies from back in the 80s that I missed – stuff like Maniac Cop, Deadly Friend, and 976-Evil. Expect some more reviews soon.

Chopping Mall is currently streaming on Peacock.