Chopping Mall is one of those 80's films that is very different but it never really comes around to be as good as it could be. The film also has not aged real well and is laughably bad at times but it is no doubt entertaining and it's originality makes it at least worth one watch.
The film is set in a mall and it tells the story of middle-age people who work at the mall and decide to break the rules and throw a party after the mall is closed. During this, new mall security has been brought in with robots doing most of the work. This gets interesting when the robot security system system malfunctions and the robots start to kill the party goers.
The coolest thing in this film is the robots and they are well done and provide a lot of good cheap humor. The kill scenes in particular are well done with some great gore which helped me like the film a little more
Another neat thing the film is that is has two somewhat well-known actors, Dick Miller and the scream queen Barbara Crampton who are both excellent here. It also has Russell Todd who really hasn't done any acting since the 90's, and he's also excellent. All in all, the cast is great even though they aren't big stars.
The atmosphere is also pretty good here. The movie is set in the famous Sherman Oaks Gallery where "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" was filmed. The mall setting has a great 80's vibe to it and it's pretty cool to see the outdated stores there. I do think that throwing a party at mall for middle-age people is obviously pretty unrealistic and the robots do feel out of place but that is ok because the mall setting really worked for me.
There are quite a few cheap and unrealistic scenes including one unnecessary sex scene that has a pretty bad setup and all this does take down the film a bit.
Chopping Mall has it's flaws and is nowhere near perfect but it is something different and it some cool 80's stuff in it which makes it a decent 80's horror film.
3.5/5
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