YKWIM #59: Forget About It Friday - Chopping Mall (1986)
Trigger warning: I will be talking about a horror movie that involves killer robots and campy depictions of death.
Forget About It Friday
A look back on films, both theatrical and made-for-TV, that have slipped from the pop cultural collective consciousness over the last thirty or so years. Most of these will be from the late 70s through the 90s, though not exclusively. Do these movies hold up? Have we forgotten them for good reason? Will the plots get weirder and weirder? Stay tuned!
By some stroke of calendar luck, Forget About It Friday will happen three times in the month of October, so it seems like a given to pick films of the spooky, scary variety. I’m sure there’s nothing on your mind right now because we live in such a super chill country that’s only about to implode at any moment, so let’s dive in!
I’ll admit, horror movies are a little hard. I can appreciate the genre (especially a hilariously campy movie like this one) but I’m not an obsessive. This probably isn’t a forgotten one for big horror fans. However, I had never heard of it until recently and it’s my newsletter, so these are the subjective rules we shall follow.
Chopping Mall (1986)
Provided description, typos and all: Two weeks ago, Park Plaza Mall installed the perfect security system. Nothing could go wrong. That is until four teenage couples find themselves trapped with three armed, short-circuiting robots.
We kick things off with a seedy looking guy in a dark shopping mall. He looks both ways (classic seedy move) and breaks the glass on a jewelry store window. He snatches all the gems, including a necklace that looks like the Heart of the Ocean from Titanic. After stuffing his pockets, he walks off with a smug look on his face. He got away with it! Except, what’s that? It’s a robot! He scoffs and walks away. UNTIL— the robot shoots a cord with a dagger on the end and the bad guy falls to the ground. Credits roll, THE END.
And then, lights up! It was a promotional film all along. A security company is selling their new robots and trying to convince store owners in the local mall that this is a good idea. The bots are controlled in a computer room by a guy in a white scientist jacket with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth. Completely safe! How can these robots tell good guys from bad guys? Simple, just hold up your ID badge and the robot overlords will scan your identifying information! People seem doubtful, but we have money to worry about, so like it or not, robots are rolling in.
Cut to a restaurant inside the mall. Two teenage blondes, one sweet and one sassy, are trying to get through their waitressing shift. Suzie, the sassy one, wants to set up Allison, the sweetie, with a friend of her boyfriend. Allison is new in town, a little skeptical, and of course she agrees.
Meanwhile, the boys are hanging out upstairs inside a furniture store. We got Nerdy Ferdy, the kid being set up with Allison, Suzie’s BF, whose name I can’t remember, and Mullet Mike. Mullet Mike lives up to his name. He is the quintessential 80s horndog hunk and his hot blonde girlfriend works in a clothing boutique. He’s also constantly chewing a wad of gum.
Suzie’s BF and Mullet Mike can’t wait for Nerdy Ferdy to meet his blind date but all he cares about is balancing the books for his uncle’s furniture store. What a nerd! Another couple join them but like Suzie’s BF and Mullet Mike’s GF, their names are forgettable and they have brown hair. Eight teenagers is too much for a horror movie. The couples make out, dance, drink beer, your usual teenage debauchery. Allison and Nerdy Ferdy meet to a stars-align music cue. “Hi,” she says breathlessly. “Hi,” he says back.
Up in security headquarters, trouble is afoot. A lighting storm messes with the motherboard and the robots turn on by themselves (always a bad sign). That lightning bolt somehow transformed the bots into killing machines and they easily knock off the scientists running the show. Never turn your back on machinery, people! The bots escape and off they go into the mall.
The robots have a catch phrase after every kill— the cryptic and consumeristic, “Thank you. Have a nice day.”
All the teenage couples hook up on various beds and couches in the furniture store…. except Allison and Nerdy Ferdy. They watch an old '50s horror movie and share a cute kiss that’s extremely chaste compared to the hot ‘n heaviness around them. Note the final girl trope! ~*foreshadowing*~ Nerdy Ferdy keeps saying they need to leave soon or they’ll be locked inside until 6 am. ~*foreshaaaadddowwwing*~
One of the bots comes across a janitor trying to clean up after “those damn kids” and it does the working man dirty.
Back in the furniture store, Mullet Mike’s GF wants to smoke, so off Mullet Mike goes to the cigarette machine. Oh man, it’s a dollar and a quarter for a pack and he pats down his jeans looking for an extra coin. That’s the equivalent of $3.02 today, smokers.
These robots are as loud as a Dustbuster except somehow one of them sneaks up on him without a sound. He shows his badge with a bit of a ‘tude, and the bot is NOT here for it. It comes at him and unfortunately for Mullet Mike, the emergency exit is locked.
Mullet Mike’s GF gets impatient, so she puts on a shirt and tries to find him. She finds him alright, with a giant spraying gash in his neck, and out of a cloud of mist, the robot busts through that locked emergency exit. She screams, she runs, and it’s the closest to a traditional slasher movie that this movie gets.
She runs to the front of the furniture store. Her friends get to the window just in time to see a laser shoot out of the bot and BOOM, her head explodes. Half the special effects budget went into that explosion. You can look it up, I won’t put it here for scaredy cats.
The kids scramble to the back of the store while the robots shoot them with lasers and crash into furniture. Feathers everywhere, glass flying, a total mess. They lock themselves in a back office. The girls crawl through the air shaft and the boys go off to get some weapons. Suzie regrets leaving her boyfriend, so the whole girl gang turns back around to try and help the guys. Somehow this mall has a hardware store (?), so Suzie grabs a container of gasoline and Allison stuffs a road flare stick down her shirt. ~*foreeeshaddddowwwinnngggg*~
lol @ the two Rambo wannabes and then Nerdy Ferdy with his toy cap gun
Unfortunately, that gasoline container was a bad choice. The robots chase the girls, one hits Suzie’s leg with a laser, and she lays screaming on the floor for a full 30 seconds. Why she doesn’t at least attempt to crawl away, I can’t say, but I can tell you that another laser beam hits that gas container and up she goes up in flames. Suzie!!
On the positive side, Allison takes that cap gun off Nerdy Ferdy and she manages to blow up one of the bots (please note, the machine guns did nothing). One down, two to go! “My dad’s a Marine,” she explains.
The kids take refuge in the restaurant where Allison and Suzie worked. Their brunette friend (shown above) crunches some numbers on a calculator and tells them, “If we survive, we’ll be in hock to the mall for the next… 85 years.” GIRL, WHAT. Only teenagers in 1980s capitalism think they owe anything for the trying to escape from the mall’s killer robots instead of the other way around.
The teens figure that the only way out is to get these things for good. Suzie’s BF is so mad he runs up an escalator after a robot and it easily throws him off the landing. Bummer, my dude.
The teens face down with another bot and manage to short-circuit it but not before it gets that brown-haired couple, so it’s just Allison and Nerdy Ferdy left. He puts up a good fight until Nerdy Ferdy gets thrown to the ground by a bot and he’s out cold. Allison is on her own, such as all that ~*foreeeeshadddooowwwwwinnnnggggg*~ has forecast.
Allison hides in a pet store with tarantulas and snakes crawling on her (scary!) and hangs from the edge of the mall’s second floor (very scary!). The scariest thing of all is that according to the IMDb trivia section, Kelli Maroney did almost all her own stunts. Incredible, incredible. Allison manages to disable the last robot’s laser function and she escapes just in time.
Allison finds herself at an industrial paint store (reminder, we are in a shopping mall). She pops off numerous paint cans and spreads it all over the floor without getting a single drop on herself. Again, incredible. She empties a couple gas containers while she’s at it. The last remaining robot finds her and rolls into the paint store. But oh! The paint on the floor jams its wheels and its stuck. Allison runs out of the store, pulls the road flare out of her bra, and has the final word.
“Hey,” she calls out, “Have a nice day!!!”
~*foreshaddowwwinngggggg completeeeee*~
The road flare flies through the air and blows up the entire store in raging fireball. Honestly, how the rest of the mall didn’t burn to the ground is a question for physics and science. In this moment, our heroine is thrown back a bit yet makes it out okay.
She limps through the mall, injured but still going, when she hears someone calling her name. It’s Nerdy Ferdy! He wasn’t knocked out forever!! He woke up!!! He smiles and holds up a bloody roll of toilet paper from the back of his head and even though it’s not supposed to be funny, I cackled like a witch. She limps to him, he runs to her, and they embrace in a long hug as the camera pans out.
Highs
It’s pretty damn funny, intentionally and unintentionally. I laughed out loud and rewound the funniest parts.
The hairrrrr. So much good big 80s hair. The music, the language, the high waisted khakis. The more something is of its time, the more dated it becomes later, and I really, truly love that.
A mall sequence at the beginning has got it all— making out teens, a beauty contest, pop spills in the food court, shoplifting kids. Very peak mall culture.
This was originally released under the title Killbots. Y’all know I love when a movie has more than one name!
Lows
If you require your movies to be high in plausibility, this is not for you.
There’s an cringey bit of fatphobia in the beginning that’s also of its time.
Eight teenagers is too much! I can’t even remember all their names.
Despite the title and what is depicted on the poster, there is no actual chopping, nor is there a weird robot arm like the one shown.
Final Verdict
Sometimes you need to turn off your brain with a silly movie and this is one that does just that. Well done, bots.
Thank you for reading about an old horror cult classic! Any typos, weird spacing, or grammar mistakes are the result of my fallible fingers. Links to my social and website can be found below. You can buy me a cup of coffee to give me the energy to keep doing this baloney. Any questions or comments, feel free to send them along— andrea.laurion@gmail.com