Countdown to Halloween – Chopping Mall (1986)

On the surface of things, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Chopping Mall was one of those horror movies in which the writers came up with the title first and then wrote a plot around it. Despite carrying the tagline, “where shopping will cost you an arm and a leg”, no one in the movie is really mutilated and/or cut up. The now iconic poster of a robotic claw holding a shopping bag filled with a human head drew many people to rent the VHS, but it doesn’t represent the movie that was actually released.

However, this is not the biggest case of false advertising since The Neverending Story and is more of a case of marketing trying to make the best of a bad situation. Chopping Mall was originally released under the title Killbots in 1986 but when the film did poorly with audiences, the producers felt it was because many thought the movie was a kid-friendly Transformers knock-off rather than a violent exploitation flick. They went back to the drawing board, re-cut the movie and released on VHS under its new title Chopping Mall, where it received its cult status.

It should come as no surprise to find that Roger Corman was one of the producers behind the movie.

Chopping Mall is very typical for a late 80s horror movie as it features a group of teenagers staying overnight in a large shopping mall only to be attacked by the robotic security system which has now gone rouge due to a lightning storm. Now the teens must try everything in their power to survive these R2-D2s of death who are armed with deadly lasers.

There is a good reason why Chopping Mall has become a cult favourite among horror fans – it’s utterly stupid but a lot of fun. Chopping Mall is the sort of movie that could only have come from the Roger Corman back catalogue. Its actors are bland to mediocre, the effects are very cheap, it’s shot and edited quite poorly and the script was clearly knocked out in a few days with out a second draft so they could get the movie into production faster. But all of that adds to the movie’s charm.

Not many movies can get away with getting virtually everything wrong but still coming out entertaining at the end of the process, but somehow Chopping Mall pulls it off. Whether it’s the ridiculous plot of killer security robots, who look like less intimidating versions of Daleks, shooting lasers at our heroes or just the awful display of bad writing and acting, there is a charm to Chopping Mall that makes it thoroughly entertaining. It’s crap, but at least it’s crap that is fun to watch.

Even the DVD release of this movie still maintains that VHS quality with grainy lines, bad sound mixing and washed out colours – as if it was just recorded straight from the video store in the late 80s. It may sound over romanticising what is clearly a lazy DVD conversion, but it really is like stepping back in time to a period in which this sort of movie was acceptable trash.

It’s not for everyone and it is easier to laugh at than be scared by, but Chopping Mall holds a special place in the cult arena of horror movies.It’s a movie that could have only been made, released, re-edited, re-released in the late 80s to become a cult hit on VHS. Any other period of time, (save perhaps the early 80s) and this film would have fallen into obscurity, only to be known by the hardcore masses. Thankfully, it was made when it was.

Luke Owen is one of Flickering Myth’s co-editors and the host of the Flickering Myth Podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.