Chopping Mall (1986)

Director: Jim Wynorski

Writers: Jim Wynorski, Steve Mitchell

Composer: Chuck Cirino

Starring: Kelli Maroney, Tony O'Dell, Russel Todd, Karrie Emerson, Barbara Crampton, Nick Segal, John Terlesky, Suzee Slater, Paul Bartel, Mary Woronov, Dick Miller, Angus Scrimm

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Tonight Park Plaza Mall switches on the world's toughest security force. Absolutely nothing can go wrong.

Plot: Eight teenagers are trapped after hours in a high tech shopping mall and pursued by three murderous security robots out of control.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Probably not.

At first I thought this was a ripping off ROBOCOP (1988) until I realized this came two years before ROBOCOP.  Nice.  The film opens with one of the security bots doing its job.  After a couple of minutes you realize it's a demonstration video.  Then you've got the bots attacking the teens that stay late in the store.  A lot of this feels like ROBOCOP in small ways.  There are some great kills like the head exploding from a laser blast .  There's also a nice bit of nudity that's all in one spot just before the shit hits the mall fan.  Again, nice.  Seeing Bartel, Woronov and Miller in any film is a plus.  Too bad they're not in it more but I'll take what I can get from those kids.  It gets a little draggy in the last half but it's still kinda fun.  I enjoyed it.  The ending was as expected except there's no way the last person standing would have lasted that long before the bot would have lasered their ass.  Yeah, that's right, I'd like to see at least a little bit of realism and logic in the dumb ass movies I watch.