CHOPPING MALL (1986)

DIRECTED by Jim Wynorski.

SCREENPLAY by Jim Wynorski & Steve Mitchell.

STARRING  - Kelli Marony as Allison Parks,  Tony O'Dell as Ferdy Meisel,  Russell Todd as Rick Stanton,  Karrie Emerson as Linda Stanton,  Barbara Crampton as Suzie Lynn,  Nick Segal as Greg Williams,  Suzee Slater as Leslie Todd,  John Terlesky as Mike Brennan,  Paul Bartel as Paul Bland,  Mary Woronov as Mary Bland,  Dick Miller as Walter Paisley,  Jim Wynorski as Killbot (voices).

PLOT - Park Plaza Shopping Mall has installed a revolutionary new security system. Three robots controlled by a central computer network are activated to patrol the shopping mall night and day, a deterant to shop lifters and any other criminals who are planning to infiltrate the mall. The system is ahead of its time, fool proof and highly efficient.  Nothing can go wrong...

Something does go wrong. Teenage mall workers Allison and Suzie join thier friends Greg, Mike, Leslie and Ferdy for an illicit after hours party at a furniture store, they are joined by a slightly older married couple, Rick and Linda. The couples party, get drunk, have sex. Allison and Ferdy get together.

However, outside a thunder storm is raging, lightning strikes the mall and the security computer is scrambled. The Proctectorbots malfunction and go on a rampage, killing a late working janitor and the computer system technicians. Then, they notice the partying youngsters at the furniture store...

Very soon, the kids are fighting for thier lives against the technological terror that was supposed to keep them safe...

DIALOUGE  - Killbot (After killing someone) - "Thank you - Have a nice day !"

PERFORMANCES  - The main character and final girl in this movie is Allison Parks played by Kelli Marony. It is through Allison's eyes that we see most of the action unfold. Marony portrays Allison as the stereotypical "good girl", she's not as wild or sexualised as the other girls in the film. Rather than getting drunk and outright sleeping with Ferdy (Tony O'Dell) at the party, the two instead just kiss and talk (the other couples are at it hammer and tongues in the bedroom department of the store). Following the unwritten rules of 80's teen horror, this sexual abstinence is probably what saves both thier lives. For as we all know, sex equals death in these movies. Apart from the chaste aspects of her character, Allison is also shown to be a crack shot with a rifle (her dad was a marine apparently), unsurprisingly this somewhat unconventional skill for a seventeen year old girl comes in very handy as the events of the story unfold. Morony was apparently cast because the director wanted to date her (I can't say I blame him, Morony is the very definition of "cute" in this movie and she still looks pretty good nearly 40 years later), thankfully though, she gets past this neopotistic bit of casting and is actually very good in the role.

Also good is O'Dell in the role of Ferdy, the final boy and Allison's love interest. Ferdy is the archetypal glasses wearing "nerd" character. He's into sci-fi movies and not very confident around girls (sounds like me at that age, no glasses though, I had to wait until I hit forty five to get them). Ferdy is the very inversion of the typical teenage guy you normally get in these types of film. It's Allison who makes the first move on him and it's Allison who saves his life numerous times throughout the film. Ferdy is very much the "damsel in distress" for most of the film.

The other "teens" (they're all about twenty five-ish really) fall more into the traditional character types of 80's horror cinema. Mike (John Terlesky) is the confident cocky, "jock" of the group, you can imagine that he's the one that always got the girls at school due to being in the Football team, naturally, he's the first to die. Leslie (Suzee Slater) is his bimbo of a girlfriend, she's portrayed as being slutish and spoilt, naturally, she gets the goriest death scene. Scream queen Barbara Crampton plays Suzie who is Allison's best friend and cries and panics a lot whilst being chased by killer robots (perfectly understandable really). Greg (Nick Segal) loses the plot slowly as the situation worsens, eventually becoming a total liability to the entire group. Rick (Russell Todd) and his wife Linda (Karrie Emerson) are the twenty something married couple who manage to score the booze for the party. You get the impression thats the only real reason they where invited along by the teens, but they at least prove to be fairly handy in a fight. For a while at least...All of the above are played well by thier respective actors and actresses (are we allowed to call them "actresses" anymore ? I can never keep up with all the ever changing definitions of what we can or cannot say in this strange, woke world we now live in).

We also get a nice little cameo from B-movie legend Dick Miller as Walter Paisley, the janitor, a kind of alt-universe version of the character, Walter Paisley who he played in Roger Corman's A Bucket Of Blood (1959).

SFX  - The majority of this film's special effects budget seems to have gone on realising the Proctectorbots aka Killbots which provide the main threat of the movie.

I'd say that they're pretty successful really. They look sturdy, strong and realistic. The designers didn't go too overboard and kept them looking within the realms of what would have been feasibly possible in the mid 1980's. This adds a level of realism to the film which wouldn't have been there if the robots had been made to look more spectacularly futuristic. You get some very 80's looking electrical lightning effects when the robots malfunction and some suitably neon laser blast effects too...

SEX & VIOLENCE  - Both of which mainly seem to involve Suzee Slater for some reason. You get some topless shots of her, shortly before she gets her head blown to pieces in a spectacular fashion...

The filmmakers where clearly so pleased with this shot that you get to see it again in the film's end credits...

...and this time its freeze framed. 

Suzee Slater gets it the worst by far but there are also burnings, electrocutions and laserings to savour too.

RATING  - I like this film. Its fast paced and fun. While it sticks to the conventions and standard tropes of 80's teen horror in some respects, it also subverts those tropes in other ways, giving us a movie that is a lot cleverer than it initially appears to be. The film's runtime just rushes by and it never outstays its welcome. If you're looking for some frenetic frenzied horror/sci-fi action then look no further than this little gem. 4 and a half malfunctioning robots out of 5. These ARE the droids you're looking for.