Chopping Mall (1986) ***

Jim Wynorski has directed a lot of schlock. I admit, I've only seen but one of his films, the subject of this review, but just take a look at his IMDb filmography—lots of direct-to-video titles, TV movies, softcore parodies, and sequels to films that he didn't create. The titles alone are enough to make you giggle. 

Chopping Mall (1986) has a great (if misleading) title and an equally great (and equally misleading) theatrical poster. Originally released under the name Killbots (which actually makes more sense), this horror comedy wastes basically no time setting up its premise, wherein "state-of-art" mall security robots (immediately) malfunction and terrorize a group of employees partying after hours. 

Wynorski's sophomore feature is light on gore (though it has one hilarious death and one very disturbing one), heavy on cheese, and is a weird mishmash of tone. While they're not exactly the same, The Protector robots resemble ED-209 from RoboCop (my review here), which CM predates by a year. Lead Kelli Maroney (Night Of The Comet (1984)) makes a solid heroine, but the rest of the cast is just so-so. Barbara Crampton is unfortunately hysterical for her entire screen time (especially disappointing when she had a much stronger role in From Beyond (my review here) the same year). A cadre of cult genre actors have fun bits part though, including Paul Bartel, Mary Woronov, Gerrit Graham, and the legendary Dick Miller. 

Chopping Mall is a cheap film and doesn't really add anything to the single location horror subgenre (Dawn Of The Dead (1978) this is not). But while it's nothing spectacular, the film still serves as an amusing little slice of fun when you have ~80 minutes to kill.