Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name is Rob Lamb.
And I'm Joe McCormick. And oh boy, we got a treat for you this week. Rob, your pick was Chopping Mall.
That's right, because we're in the midst of the holiday shopping season here in America, so it just absolutely made
sense to watch Chopping Mall. Shopping Mall is not a holiday horror movie or a holiday movie at all, but it concerns the shopping mall, you know, the original cathedrals of consumerism, giant interior spaces where you could eat, shop, hang out when permitted by security, and of course, during the holidays, meet Santa Claus himself or some representative of Santa Claus within this giant, enclosed space.
Now, when I was a teenager, there was a brief time when I actually did hang out at the shopping mall, just like in the movies, because it's very convenient when you're like fourteen, you don't have your own car. You want to hang out with your friends at a place where you're not like at somebody's house with their parents, but you don't really have anywhere else to go. You can get dropped off at the mall and hang out there.
But right at the time that I was like getting into a groove of hangouts at the mall, our local mall I think banned unaccompanied miners because some of us were getting into trouble.
Apparently, Yeah, yeah, that was That was frequently the issue, wasn't it. I don't remember. I don't think I ever went to the mall frequently enough to run a foul of security. But I remember it being an ideal destination as like a junior high kid and as a teenager a bit, you know, because you go there, you got the food, you got the arcade, You've got the you know, the Spencer's gift stores and the like the rock band
T shirt store. You know, it feels like you're you're entering into a wider world of adult responsibility and possibilities when you go into the mall.
And extreme alienation and religious significance.
Yeah. So yes. Chopping Mall is a nineteen eighty six film, and just the fact that it came out in eighty six is pretty amazing, because nineteen eighty six is an amazing year for genre cinema, but the genre that I am yeah, oh yeah, that's try You came out in eighty six, so you and this movie are basically siblings. Of course. The other big horror movie that's filmed in the mall is George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, which
is I guess you could say, you know. Donn of the Dead is more of a intentional satire of consumerism and the American use of malls, where characters end up going there during a zombie apocalypse and encountering all of these zombified humans that are just sort of wandering about the mall. Chopping Mall is a little lighter on the satire, but is is still a heck of a lot of fun.
Well, I say, no, Chopping Mall is heavy on the satire, but the tone of the satire is lighter. Yes, it's like when when when Dona the I mean, I love Donna the Dead, but but when it decides to say something, it's going to like sort of grab you by the collar and say something at you. It's it's very heavy handed.
Chopping Mall has a I mean, let's let's be clear, Chopping Mall is is just sleezy eighty slasher trash, but it's a kind of transcendent sleezy eighty slasher trash because it has a real spirit of fun and it's like sour cream and onion flavored. It's just really spunky.
Yeah, it's when it has something to say about malls and consumers and it's it's it's more of a snicker as opposed to a loud proclamation to your point. And uh, and I will say, well, you could argue that there's some sleezy aspects to the plot. A lot of the sleazier aspects feel like like they're thirteen year old sleezy as opposed to like, you know, thirty year old sleezy.
I guess they're not night killer sleazy. Yeah, you're not going to the real dark side.
Yeah, I mean it's radied r, but you know it's not gonna haunt your memories or anything.
Well, I guess we get into weird territory because I realized, like I just assumed from the beginning that the listeners would always realize the movies we're talking about on Weird House are almost never for kids. But we did recently talk about an Ewok adventure, so there may be some mixed signals going on now unless we say otherwise, the movies we talk about on Weird House Cinema are not for children.
Correct, So I think the first place to start with this one is just is to talk about the title of the picture and the posters that came out the VHS cover art as well promoting this film, because it's excellent,
but it's also really misleading. Like I remember seeing the poster or box art when I was a kid, and it says shopping mall, and depending on the copy, it's either in like blood font or like dripping chrome font, and in either case, the centerpiece is a red paper shopping bag that is torn and to varying degrees, loaded with body parts like somebody's just chop some people up put them in a shopping bag, and then there is
some sort of monstrous hand holding the bag. On one poster it looks pretty much like like a big medieval gauntlet, and on the other poster it looks like a slightly cybernetic goblin hand.
Yeah, so what these bags definitely have in common is the contents, which are body parts ahead the title chopping mall, but the hand. The difference in the hand is fascinating and confusing and strange. What were they trying to say about this film that in one version it's the Rollerball glove, and then the other one it is a robot monster.
Yeah. The robot monster hand too, looks a whole lot like the disembodied hand from the poster for the American Haunted House movie House that came out the year before, which is of course a very signature poster as well. This disembodied hand, I think putting a key in a door lock.
Yeah, that's right. But the rollerball glove is interesting too. It's got like the studs and the razors on the knuckles. I don't know if you've ever seen the I must confess I've actually never seen the James Kahn movie Rollerball, but I'm to understand it's about some kind of dystopian future death sport that where the characters wear these leather gloves that have metal studs on all the knuckles.
Yeah, and the poster vhs RT for Rollerball prominently features that spiked fist of James Khan.
So which came out first Rollerball or Chopping mall O Rollerball for sure?
Oh okay, yeah, so I think one of the things that explains all of this is the fact that this movie chopping mall the Corman camp because this is ultimately a Roger Corman production. I think Julie Corman, his wife, is actually the producer, but it's a Corman property. They tried to put it out with the name Kilbots, prominently featuring one of the killer robots that's in the film on the poster, and apparently it didn't do as well.
So Corman did a trick that he had done previously, and that is take the film, repackage it, give it a new title, new poster, arc put it out again, and strike gold.
It's a whole new thing.
Yeah. They'd done something similar with the nineteen seventy nine film Screamers, which was an American release of the Italian film Island of the Fishmen, and they put it out as something Weights in the Dark. Didn't work, so they took it back and Corman actually got this guy, Jim wy Norski to produce some new opening footage for it. They gave it a new title, Screamers, and then it did pretty well.
This is the one about the people who shipwreck on an island and there's like a mad scientist there who has created human fish hybrids.
Yeah. Yeah, it's fabulous and I would love to back and discuss it in a future episode, but I bring it up here. Is just an example of the kind of stuff that the Corman camp would do to figure out just a sweet spot for promoting a film, and in this case that what they seem to get was, well, the audience isn't really interested in a killer robot movie with this kind of like old fashioned, clunky robot, but if we sell it as a slasher picture, then we got them.
I mean, it's a huge difference. The poster for Chopping Mall. I see that and I'm like, oh, I'm in the poster for Killbots. I don't know. It looks like I've seen this before and I had not.
Yeah, I remember seeing the box or the post art for Chopping Mall as a kid and being too afraid to look at the back of the box. But in my mind I knew that it had to be a film about a crazy guy in a big metal glove who kills people in a shopping mall. Like that was the whole plot I've formed in my head, And that's pretty far from the truth. Yeah, this is a killer robot movie.
Yeah, you would have imagined this was like a slasher movie that involved I don't know, weapons lifted from KB Toys or something. Yeah, or what was the oh Man? The was it Camelot? The mall music store? Yeah, and the I remember everything there was always really expensive, Like the CDs were twenty two dollars and I was like, how can you buy that?
Yeah, that was an age when when trying out new music it was a totally different scenario. Like today, you try out multiple albums per day if you want via you know, pretty much any paid subscription or even not paying just going on YouTube and stuff. But back then, it was like, all right, I'm going to drop twenty bucks on this new album. I don't know what it's
going to be, like, I haven't heard it. It might be terrible, I might have I'm just going to listen to it over and over again, though, and it at least forced myself to like one song because this is what I'm listening to this month, right.
I mean, it was a very different time because of the monetary and time investment involved in discovering new music. It seems like once you found something, you really liked it was more special. Yeah, maybe that's just idealizing the past.
No, no, but you know, this is all really getting it. I think one of the key things about Chopping Mall that's so lovable is that Chopping Mall is an historic document, you know, Like so much of my appreciation of the film is the fact that, yeah, they filmed it in a real mall, an enormous mall. I'm all with three floors, and you see all these authentic stores in the background, and it just it feels like some sort of a testament to this this lost or fading tradition of American commercialism.
It also very much reminds me of the mall in which scenes are shot in the movie Commando, and I wonder if it is literally the same mall that they used.
To Well, let's go ahead and hit the elevator pitch for this one.
Okay, give it to me, Okay.
Part Plaza Mall has just updated its security system with state of the art lockdown systems and three kill bots. I don't think they call them killbots, but they're protectors, protectors to patrol throughout the mall. So obviously this is a perfect time for several couples several teen couples to have a lockdown party inside one of the stores, inside of a furniture store. What could possibly go wrong?
It's great, It's like, I mean, one of the funny things is the presumption and actually I can believe this thinking about it now, that the party teens would not be made aware of the fact that there are lethal robots rolling around in the mall at night, even though they work there. It's just like the need to know basis, you work here, but you don't need to know.
Yeah, they didn't put out a mimo or anything.
Yeah, should we hit some trailer audio?
Yeah, let's listen to some of this fabulous trailer.
They broke into the mall or the wildest all night party of their lives.
And technique.
But you're never alone.
In the chumping.
What's that robots?
Jumping hall? We're shopping costs you an arm and a leg?
All right?
Where'd this thing come from?
All right? Well, we mentioned the director and writer already, and that is jim Y Norski, who again was part of the Roger Corman camp there. He was born in nineteen fifty, still alive today as of this recording, and is just a career b cinema guy. This was only his second film. It was a follow up to nineteen eighty four's Lost Empire, which apparently was a fantasy film.
I have not seen it, but I did read that Jim later said that Roger Corman hated the movie, but he thought that he quote put the camera in some interesting places and the girls were pretty, so that was enough to get him sort of pull him into the orbit of Roger Korman. But I did notice that Alan Howarth did the music for it and has Angus Scrim in it, So how bad could it possibly be?
Wait? Was Angus scrim in this movie?
He is? Yes, yeah, yeah, I'll go ahead and point out. Angus scrim the tall Man of the Phantasm movies has a very brief cameo. It's not even a cameo because he's not He's under an assumed name and you never see his face. But he's an individual who stands up and asks a question at the Kilbot press conference in the early stage of the movie.
Oh okay, that was him.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but yeah, unless you're looking for it, you'll totally miss it. So anyway, yeah, Jim Wainorski, here he goes on from this film to direct Death Stalker two. He directed The Return Swamp Thing. He has one hundred and four director credits on IMDb, including a fair amount of exploitation films, some late night Cinemax style films thrown in there, but also family films, some kind of cringey looking parody films from recent years, but just a lot
of stuff all over the map, Yeah, all over the map. Like, some of it looks very interesting, some of it you want to skip on. But but yeah, he's had quite a career.
It's hard to believe that this was made by the same person who made Death Stalker two, because Death Stalker two is just a sand sandwich. It's just awful. Then this is, I mean, comparatively, this movie is I mean again, it is trash, but it's very it's pretty like light fun trash.
Yeah, yeah it is. It's it's more fast food, you know. And and it also this is something worth pointing out. It knows it's fast food, but in a way that oddly works. It's very rare to find that in a film today. You know, so many self aware b movies are just difficult to tolerate. But this and somehow it would it walks that line and does a good job with it.
We were just talking about this recently off mic about how there are so few intentionally bad, successfully funny movies and TV shows, and now you know, obviously we're doing this show, so we clearly love bad movies. But but like, it's hard to think of people who do it on purpose and it works. We thought of Garth Marenghi's Dark Place bad on purpose, very funny. This movie, I think fits that category, but it's really quite rare. Most of the time, it just hurts.
Yeah, And one of the things that I was saying about Garth Marenghi's Dark Place is that, well, it works because it has this kind of dry sensibility. But Chopping Mall does not have a dry sensibility. So you know, my reasoning there doesn't really apply to this film.
Yeah, I wonder all.
Right, So, as we mentioned Chopping Mall concerns, I think four different couples, and they are difficult to keep track of until they start dying because they all basically look alike. As I was discussing the film with my wife last night, I think this film's idea of diversity is casting one non blonde female in the whole picture, so it's easy to lose track of who's who. We're not going to mention all of the teen players here, but we'll mention a few of them. Top billing goes to Kelly Moroney.
She was also the star of Night of the Comment in eighty four.
Oh, that's another great one. We shall come back to that.
The real standout team is Mike, the beefy one, the gum Shower, and he's played by John Terleski. Very memorable part of this film. But he's one of these guys
that goes on to have quite a career. Well, first of all, he goes on to play the death Stalker in Death Stalker two, but he went on to act in a bunch of stuff and directed quite a bit, including just a ton of steady mainstream TV work in recent years, sixpisodes of the Blacklist, twenty six episodes of Castle, and then in two thousand and five, he wrote and directed a movie about.
Cerberus from Greek mythology.
Yeah, well, I mean I haven't seen it. I've only seen the trailer. I can't imagine. It's too versed in Greek mythology, but it exists.
I mean, this guy is an amazing specimen. So we're gonna talk. I guess once we get into the full plot breakdown, I'll mention some of the main teens. But this guy is just a peak specimen of the like eighties jock Bully character, and he's so good. He's just a can of Dentte Moore. He's this knuckleneck guy with the smirks. It's fabulous.
Yeah, he's shirtless most of the film. It's wonderful, or most of the film during which he's alive. Because obviously he's the character that's introduced. You're like, oh, this guy's this guy's biding it. This guy's getting killed by a robot for sure.
Yeah.
Now, the film also features the legendary Barbara Crampton as Susie, one of the the teens were discussing here. Now. She's a true screen queen and genre staple, especially in Stuart Gordon films. She got her start in Brian de Palmer's Body Double, but then she went on to act in Reanimator, from Beyond, Puppet Master, Transfers to Robot Wars, Castle Freaks, Space Truckers. Yeah, she's been in a ton of stuff.
Oh, that's Robot Wars. But I thought for a second you were talking about Robot Jocks, which is I think also a Stuart Gordon movie.
Yeah, robot Jocks is really Good's that's one that's kind of in my short list to scout out to see if that's one we need to discuss here.
Oh oh it's coming.
Yeah. Now, another cult icon that's in this film, though very briefly, is Mary warrenov plays. She plays a character that we're told is Mary Bland alongside Paul Bland played by Paul Bartell. I'll get to in just a second there at present only briefly in the film, at that Kilbot press conference that it occurs.
Early on in the film.
Now, she's very interesting. She started out as a Warhol superstar in the eighties, one of Andy Warhol's followers and celebrity people. But then she acted in a ton of B movies, especially Corman films. She did a lot of TV and stage work, and she's one of these people that I always smile when she shows up in a film because she's always an absolute delight. And the cool thing is you often find her alongside this guy Paul Bartell, who again is playing the bearded gentleman setting next to her.
And this is interesting because he's most famous for writing and directing the horror comedy Eating Rahul in nineteen eighty two, about a pair of restaurant tours who turned to murder. And he plays Paul Bland in that, and Mary plays Mary Bland in that. So in Chopping Mall, they are reprising these.
Roles the core cinematic universe.
Yeah, exactly, And so there you know, it's all just a big wink to this other movie now and within the Corman universe. Bartel also directed Corman's Death Race two thousand, among a slew of other films.
Oh that's interesting, another bad one. Man. We are just rattling off the list of rabbit holes to go down today. I should mention before we move on from Mary, warnoff that she is also fantastic in a more recent horror movie, The actually quite scary and extremely disturbing, extremely good House of the Devil, directed by Ty West.
Oh cool. I haven't seen that yet, but if she's in it, I'm interested.
Yeah, she's great. And it's also got Tom Noonan in it, who's oh creepy as he always is. But I don't know I don't want to write it off as just like, well, those are his character traits. I mean, tom Noonan is a great actor, but also just like eh.
He plays a great, great creep for sure. Yeah, all right, I mean there's just some again, like you said, so many rabbit holes in the cast of this film, because it also has Dick Miller. Oh.
Dick Miller is also a classic Corman player, going all the way back.
He was.
He starred in some sixties Coorman movies, Not of This Earth. He's got a great small role in that. He's just wonderful.
Yeah, a lot of you will probably remember him from Grimlins Grimlins two. He was in the Howling piranha little Shop, the Little Shop of Ours, Night of the Creeps, and then one of the scenes that I really love him in. Again, he's often in the little small parts and things, but he was in the Terminator. He was the gun shop clerk. Do you remember that scene, Joe, of course.
Yeah, one of these weapons is ideal for home defense.
Yeah, it's that great. In exchange for the terminators rattling off this list of weapons and he says saves plasma rifle and the forty watt rage and Miller says, Hey, just what you see pal right, it's great.
I have to think that maybe there's a little bit of subtle political commentary in that scene. Was this mur robot from the future is just listing this giant catalog of weapons that he needs to murder people with, and the guy's like, yeah, defend your home.
Yeah. So Dick Miller plays you know, I guess you know he had headed a type. He plays his kind of snappy every man, you know, and that's what he plays in this He's a janitor who dares to stand up to the killer robot and gets electrocuted for it.
Oh man, the cameos just don't stop. Though. There is another amazing character actor in this movie, Garrett Graham, who's in He's in this movie for like two minutes. He just plays like a guy in a lab coat who gets murdered. But I love Garrett Graham, and this is main I mean, I love everything I've seen him in. Well, I don't know if I love all the movies, but
always love him. Yeah, And he is absolutely one of the highlights of the Phantom of the Paradise, a great Brian De Palma movie, where he plays the the I don't even know how to describe him. This like Frankenstein rock star named Beef.
Yeah, yeah, I think that's accurate. He has these eyes, these very expressive, kind of like bugged out eyes some people. Some people may recognize him as Bud the Chud from Chud to Bud the Chud.
Yeah, but there's the titular Budd the Judge.
He is he is. I really loved him in the movie Terror Vision, which also came out in eighty six and also had Mary Warrenov in it. That's a film I absolutely adore, and we may have to come back to that one in the future.
This movie is like a trawler nets just sucking in like every great weird character actor and Corman player.
Yeah, now we already mentioned Angus scrim Barely shows up apparently was credited as Lawrence Guy on this one. And then oh and then as a cameo, Julie Corman, the producer, shows up as a mall shopper with a baby. Again.
Corman is Roger Corman's wife. And as far as other folks involved in the film, I mean, I didn't follow every rabbit hole, but I did notice that Carol Clements was the art director who also worked on the nineteen eighty six film Vamp, an excellent vampire film starring Grace Jones and Billy Drago, which also has kind of a snazzy look to it.
Oh wait a second, is that the one about like the college kids who go to the vampire town that's got all the very expressionist sets.
Yeah, and Grace Jones is like this vampire dancer. Okay, and it has a great cast of b players as well, but it also has like a definite style, at least in some of the scenes.
It's been a long time, but I remember really liking that one. Yeah, okay, well is it time to get into the full plot breakdown? I mean to the extent that this movie has.
One yeah, yeah, this one. This is a This is a movie that knows once it has your attention, it needs to keep going. I think the version I watched anyway, is like seventy seven minutes, so there's only so much plot here, but it's all well done.
I always respect that. Actually, and in a movie that knows its trash and is like, look, we're going to get to the point. It's going to be really short. I've said this a million times now about Attack of the crab Monsters. It's like a sixty two minute movie. I mean, how can you beat it? It's just amazing. Why drag it out for another twenty minutes? Yeah, and I would say that Chopping Mall is of the same philosophy. It's something like seventy seven minutes long including the credits.
But so what happens at the very beginning. We begin with the scene of a robbery. You've got one of these eighties movie punks. He's this sallow leather jacket punk who breaks the glass of a jewelry store and snatches a bunch of precious jewels out of the window in an otherwise apparently just deserted mall. And so you think he's going to get away with the jewels, but then there's a robot. He is pursued by a robot who I was wondering how you were going to describe the
look of the kill bots in this movie. My feeling was that they look like Alpha five from The Power Rangers on the head portion but with tank treads.
Yeah. Yeah, they're kind of like you have to kind of define it by referencing other robots. There's a little bit of Johnny five in there. There's a little bit of Dayek in there. I'm not sure what else to compare it. Definitely that Power Rangers bot you mentioned. He does have a head like that, kind of a big flying saucer head.
The Dalak point is a good one. Alpha five dalk I would say, yeah, that's pretty much perfect. So the Alpha five Dalek is is running after the robber, rolling after the robber, and the robbers starts shooting at it with his revolver. Surely I can stop this metal robot
with with this little gun. Somebody out there needs to make a feature length documentary film that is just about the shot where some meat head in a movie is shooting a gun at a killer robot and they see the puny bullets bouncing off and doing nassing, and then they go w and the terror comes over their face and then they either drop the gun or throw the gun. Alpha five does not react to these gunshots at all. It does not even give you an AIII. He tases the crook and then we get a the end title,
which was a very nice little gag. But then it turns out this is a film within a film, and we're getting a demonstration of the latest in cutting edge security technology, the Protector one oh one series robots, and of course, as you mentioned, then we pull back we see an audience there observing this film. Hype Man's about to show up, and we see paulp. Bartel and Mary Warren of and the audience wearing their name tags, so we know that they're actually playing the same characters they
were in the other movies we've already seen. And I love what we get. This guy who runs up, who's this like Royce McCutcheon type hype man, you know, bring me some of that moon money, and he assures us that the Protectors do not kill. But Paul Bartel is not buying it. He's like, I don't know, he looked pretty dead to me. But Royce McCutcheon assures the audience that the punk is merely neutralized until he can be located by law enforcement. And then he does this survey
of all their weapons, which is great. He talks about how they've got sleep darts and they have lasers positioned here that can cut through any sort of debris, which sounds very useful in a security robot.
Yeah, like what kind of debris are they supposed to be cutting through in the mall. And as for the sleep darts, that sounds good, but I can't remember do we see any sleep darts deployed in this film.
I don't remember any sleep darts. I remember the robots. So they use their little pincer things to like slash people's necks, and they use their lasers to blow up people's heads.
Yeah, they use those lasers.
And they're like Imperial storm troopers, like they can't aim at all, but.
They get coverage. They get coverage with the spray.
That's right, they're laying down suppressing fire.
I have to say the killbots here, they look pretty good, you know. I mean you look at the overall design and it's what doesn't look thrown together. You know, it's not humanoid at all. It has like four arms that are very much like the arms of some sort of like a lunar probe or something. So it's a bit shocking if you go into it expecting that metal claw, metal hand from the poster or the box art. But I think the end result looks pretty good.
Oh yeah, I mean they're lovable deubery killer robots. Yeah, and so oh yeah, and we get this one of the things I wanted to flag that we already talked about this a bit, is that they're called protectors, because that just seems like that is actually, I think, pretty perfect satire in a very contained little capsule, because they don't seem to be designed for protecting anything that's alive.
I don't know, maybe the pets in the pet store, but the goal appears to be to quote neutralize shoplifters, and yet they're called protectors. So I think the branding satire is very on point.
Yeah, like they they want to protect merchandise from perceived thieves, even if it means absolutely destroying a store to do it, cutting through it with those lasers, rolling through it like a tank, whatever, it takes.
Warning warning, like they see a guy in a mohawk just walking by the pet store and their eyes glow red. But one of the other things I really like in this hype speech is that we get McCutcheon starts laying out like Chekhov's rules. So he says there are steel security doors that lock the mall at night so that no one can get in. Of course, the implication is
or out. You also get the the you get to get a divulged that the robots protect the mall itself but cannot enter the individual stores, which holds up for a bit in the movie. But you can guess this will lead to at least a temporary game of mal is Lava where you have to hop from store to store.
Yeah, which is is again kind of reminiscent of Donna the Dad, where there was this idea of like getting from one store to the next, and if the store was locked out, the zombies couldn't get in.
Yeah. And then also they will supposedly not harm anyone who has a security badge. So I will say it sets up both of these rules, and they hold for about a third of the movie, and then do not.
Hold right, and there's yeah, there's not. Well, there is one reason for why it doesn't work, but there's not not a lot of time is given to really explaining what went wrong here.
Oh yeah, we got to get to that. But then, of course Royce McCutcheon tells us, trust me, absolutely nothing can go wrong. Then we cut to an opening credit sequence that is dynamite, So you got this synth sequence or terminator music, and just vignettes from the galleria. We witness this lady navigating a crowded food court full of rude people pushing around, and she's got a tray full
of meatball subs and these gallon sized Coca Cola cups. Yeah, and then go to an arcade in which adult men are shoving children out of the way for a turn at the Defender cabinet. There are a bunch of beauty pageant contestants in bikinis just going up and down the escalators. We see a makeout sash happening on one of the benches down on the lower level that seems actually kind of sweet, and then it's, I don't know, the whole thing's very glorious.
Yeah, it is like the dream of Mall America presented to you, like the idea, the ideal mall experience.
But eventually, of course we're going to meet some youths who work in the mall, and I think these are basically our main character is as you alluded to earlier, it really is not even worth trying to distinguish them all that much, and they're just like they're teens who are up to no good. There are a couple of girls who work in a pizza parlor. There are some bad boys who work in a furniture store, or maybe it's a department store. I don't know. It's just got
a lot of stuff in it, but mainly furniture. In the furniture are planning a party. They are going to get some beer and then they're gonna get up to no good in the store after hours. And there's a great scene where one of the main three guys you meet at first is like, you've got your low confidence nerd, and then you've got this preppy izod chipmunk guy who looks like he's gonna go pledge Delta house. And then you've got the knuckleneck jock bully, the terleski guy who
is just exquisite. And there's a great part where they're trying to talk the nerd into partying, and eventually they win him over and he's like, okay, okay, let's party.
Yeah. So I mean, basically, true to form, you know that the nerdiest guy and the nerdiest girl are going to be the ones that survive. And really this is cemented when as the party progresses, everybody else is making out and whatnot, but these two are settled in on a couch in the furniture store and what are they watching on the TV?
Oh? Man, it's Attack of the Crab Monsters. This was one of my favorite moments in the movie. Wait, what did you think about this when you saw it?
I loved it. I was like, yep, I mean part of it, I think is knowing that it's your one of your favorite films and yeah, and also that it's just there's something about this being a Corman production, and like the worship of Corman cinema within the film feels Yeah, it feels perfect.
Yeah. So they're watching Attack of the Crab Monster is a late fifties Corman classic drive in movie classic. I think I mentioned it already earlier on. It's like sixty minutes long. It's about giant psychic crabs that are created by atomic radiation. And they're not just watching the movie, they're also watching the best scene in the movie, which is the part right at the end after the heroes blow off one of the crab's giant claws. The psychic crab taunts them by saying, so you have wounded me
very well. I will grow a new claw, but will you grow new lives when I have taken yours from you? That my friends is Corn and screenwriter Charles B. Griffith at his finest. And I don't know, it's hard to explain exactly why I love it so much, But I think also Charles B. Griffith, if he had wanted to, could have written an amazing shopping mall killbot movie.
Yeah.
Oh, but I guess we should comment on what exactly the inciting incident of the plot is. So we've got teens up to no good. They're getting into trouble in the furniture store, and then lightning strikes the mall.
Literally, this is the same thing that happened last week.
And yes, exactly the coast in the machine, the exact same plot device. There's a lightning storm, there's a power surge, and then machines go nuts and start killing people. And that's exactly what happens here. Lightning strikes the mall. We didn't plan it this way, did we. I think it just total lightning.
It somehow struck twice.
Yeah, And so lightning strikes the protectors start killing. They start with the mall security technician who is examining a Playboy magazine so intensely that he does not notice that the bots have started going biserve and you know they've gone into kill mode and so they stab him with their pincers. At some point around here, we also meet a nice couple who are having car trouble and they're going to end up at the party later. But they're
not Mall employees. I guess that doesn't really matter. That's just yeah, But at this point, you've got basically all your pieces on the board. You've got a bunch of rowdy youths they're up to after hours misbehavior. You've got security robots gone berserk, and the plot is pretty simple
after that, like you can imagine exactly what happens. It's your standard slasher trash in basic content, but as I said, this really does transcend most other slasher trash of its kind just by having a superior sense of humor and self awareness. And I think I described it already as sour cream and onion flavored. It might even be salt and vinegar. I don't know.
But to your point, like, basically what's going to happen is you're gonna have kill after kill, with the kill circle ever closing around our main characters, and then they're gonna have to back right.
U though the main characters are kind of resourceful in this movie compared to the I mean, in a lot of slasher movies, the kids are just kind of bumbling around and then they're like, oh what, oh, it's Jason Lack. But in this movie, they're they're proactive. They set traps, they try to do clever things to defeat the robots, and they sometimes succeed.
Yeah. I mean, for instance, that one of the first things they do is they go to the gun store in the mall and.
They just called it's called Pecan Pause and it's a wall to wall firearms.
That's well, that's that's that's actually kind of clever pecking pods. But but yeah, they they just they really arm themselves and and set out like, yeah, we're gonna wage war against these uh, against these robots.
One detail I like is that after the furniture boys collect their guns, you can see they've also put some kind of putty into their outer ear canals. And I don't know if that's actually advisable in this scenario, because it might make it easier for a killbot to sort of roll up on you from behind. But it's interesting. This is one of the only movies I've ever seen where characters are preparing to use firearms and they decide to go for ear protection.
It's interesting. It's pretty much the only example of responsible firearm use. Only well, I take that back, it's the only thing responsible even remotely related to a firearm that happens in this movie. But it is notable.
I don't know why that details in there, but I really appreciated it. But yeah, what are some other highlights once the carnage starts. Well, obviously there is the Dick Miller scene. So we mentioned earlier this actor who's been in Corman movie since the sixties. Dick Miller plays a janitor in this movie. He's just got one scene, but he's pretty great. He's an ornery, disgruntled janitor who's cleaning
up I don't know what it is. It's like vomit or something, and the robot rolls up on him and he gets he gets fresh with the robot and the robot electrocutes him.
Yeah, I mean the robot kind of picked a fight with him. It like knocks over a bucket. It's a weird scene. Yeah. So yeah, that's one of the early kills. Just to get things rolling and of course, throughout this, we're still in the mall, and one of my favorite things is just trying to read the names of stores in the background, one of which is House of Almonds. Like the first time you see you're not sure. You're like, is that House of Almonds? And then you see it
several times more and you're like, yes, there's there. Apparently was a store called House of Almonds. I tried to find some hard details about it. I couldn't, but I guess this was a real store. I guess they only sold almonds and almond derivative products and like almond based candies or something.
That's kind of store where you get cyanide poisoning.
Yeah, I guess.
No, Wait, so they're used to That's just hard to imagine. That's too specific to be a real business model, you'd think.
But I mean, like I say, I wasn't able to find any hard details about this. Perhaps listeners can write in about this, did you ever work at a House of Almonds? Did you own House of Almonds?
But tell us about the fall of the House of Almonds.
I did see some photos online of what looked like the interiors and in one case exterior of a store with the name House of Almonds, and it looks like it was like almond candies and stuff. So I don't know. I mean, it sounds nuts but.
So unintentional or okay, I don't know.
It's it seems appropriate given given shopping mall. Again, this is where where shopping will cost you an arm and a leg. Remember right again, I'd say I mentioned earlier that the mall in this case, and I forget where they actually filmed. This is an actual mall obviously, but it's three stories of mall and it has some gorgeous and some walkways, so of course it has some some stunts where people fall and do these big, big, enormous falls through the center of the mall.
Yeah. Eyad boy at one point gets knocked over the railing and goes splatt you know three floors below. That's pretty good.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think I read that the director Jim he like test drove one of the stunts, like to prove that it was safe or something, and I think he ended up like breaking a rib in it. So oh, but the stunts look good, uh, and they make good use of the space, apparently they This is one of those films where yeh. They filmed it in the actual mall at night when nobody else was there. And yeah, they're firing off guns, they're setting portions of
the floor on fire. They're using and lean a couple of cases at least they're using I guess phony storefronts turned into fake stores and then driving robots through them. It's it's pretty great.
Well, I wish we'd figured out before we started recording. But we should look up after this which mall it was and figure out if it's the same mall as Commando, because if so, I definitely want to receive the Eagle Eye Prize for the week.
Well, I can tell you now, Joe thinks of the power of the Internet. It was filmed at Sherman Oaks Galleria in Los Angeles, California.
Wait a second, and it was used in multiple films.
So night of the comment Commando.
Command Yes, yes, yes, what do I win? What do I win? Tell them Barbara.
Well, you get to learn that it was also where they spill filmed Innerspace parts of Innerspace Fast Times at Ridgemont High multiple films. So apparently it's just an easy place to film Back in the day.
I had such a strong feeling. Man, I feel vindicated. I'm going to be this is going to be coursing through my veins rest of the day.
Let's see what else do they do to make use of the space. There's use of the elevator. They make an elaborate robot trap using the elevator. They have kilbots using the escalators.
Yeah, that's great.
Which is a great scene because you know from earlier, you know about the size of the robot's torso there's no way that that thing's fitting on an escalator. But through the magic of cinema, it manages.
M hmm. There's one part after they blow up one of the robots in an elevator trap, which which is a great sequence, I thought. And they're they're laying low in a hideout. I think maybe they've gone back to I don't know, the pizza parlor or something, and they're sitting around drinking diet coke and it looks like one of them is drinking Tabasco sauce, just because there are drink cans and bottles on the table and then right among them is a bottle of Tabasco sauce. That was funny to me.
Let's say so yeah, basically, they regroup, they put the fight to the robots, they set robot traps, and just when you're thinking that all of the shooting at robots is going absolutely nowhere, one of them does manage to disable the killer lasers on one of the killbots with their gun, So you have to give them credit for that. Did we mention that there's a great headed explosion in this one of the female victims of her head explodes when she's shot with the laser.
Oh yeah, Terleski's girlfriend here. Her head explodes when she gets shot with a laser.
Yeah, which is It's good. It's not too grizzly. It's not like Scanner's level head burst. It's well.
Also, at the in the end credits, when they're like showing all the actors goofing around and then showing the actor's name and the character they play, the clip they pick for everybody else is just kind of like, hey, what's up hanging out on set? But the clip they
show for her is her head exploding. There is another thing that I really enjoyed, which is that toward the end we get down to our final girl of the movie, who is the nice girl from early on who worked at the pizza parlor, the one who was watching attack at the Crab Monsters with the nerdy boy. But it turns out she's a very good shot. She explains that her dad was a marine and she's in fact a real Annie Oakley with that revolver, and so she's been
running around shooting at the robot. At one point, she gets chased into a pet store and just snakes and tarantulas are spilled all over her while she's trying to hide. It's a little implausible, but I like it.
Yeah, it feels kind of perfect. I was thinking about this earlier. When I think back on some of the kids who like to hang out in the mall, I feel like, yeah, these are the kids that would have wanted to own snakes and tarantula. So it makes sense, you know, hang out of the metal store, buy your metal t shirts, and then go over and buy a tarantula.
Right. I just bought a twenty four dollars copy of The Fragile by nine inch Nails and Camelot Music, and now it's time to go get some food for my tarantula.
Yes, so ultimately they're able to overcome the robots. They blow up the last of the robots. So there is a stinger at the end where a robot comes up and says have a nice day or something to that effect, which I guess keeps the dream alive. And for my part, I can't help but wonder what could have been. You know, if they'd made a sequel to this, there's so many directions they could have gone in. They could have gone
in a Christmas direction. Wouldn't that have been perfect to have a holiday chopping mall picture where it's I don't know, maybe it's the same mall, maybe it's a different mall, but you have the kill bots. Maybe you have a killer robot. Santa got a Santa hat? Yes, yeah, it put a sand hat on it. There's so much you could do.
I totally agree.
Crossover with Donna the Dead perhaps where you have zombies and kill bots.
I don't know, but you can pit them against each other. That's smart. That's a good idea.
But I mean, sadly it never came to be. This is the chopping mall we have, and it works well. It's a very enjoyable, brisk seventy seven minutes.
You know, there is nothing about this film that's really all that deep or thoughtful, but I would still say, even at a very shallow level, it makes a pretty compelling case against autonomous lethal robots.
Yeah.
Yeah, I sort of so highlighting some of the inherent dangers there. You don't really wants something that I don't know has lethal capabilities and could malfunction, and there's not like a human operator in the middle to take responsibility for what it does.
Yeah, though there is early on. I mean, certainly that guy reading the Playboy and with the half eaten doughnut, you know, he is the what they I think they still referred to as the man in the loop on a semi apanomous system. You know, he's the one that's supposed to be keeping track, you know, checking in at least every thirty minutes to see if the bots have killed anybody. But then, of course all that gets thrown out the window when the bots get all juiced up on lightning and take him out.
I mean, I can't honestly say my feelings about autonomous lethal robots have really changed due to this movie, but I'm vibing with it basically.
Yeah, Like I said, I feel like the strongest thing the things that resonate about this movie are mostly nostalgic, making one think about the mall and what the place that the mall had in the American experience of the time, certainly in the eighties and nineties, and I guess there's
less of it today. But though there are malls still around, people still go to them, or at least they did so they yeah, I mean they still sometimes film movies and TV shows in them, so they exist, and they're really just begging for there to be another chopping mall movie filmed there. I think the sky is the limit.
Okay, if the moist air of the real life galleria evaporates and forms a mist, that is vapor wave. But then that mist condenses on a window pane and rolls down and makes a puddle on the window sill, that newly liquidized water is chopping mall.
Yeah, so it's it's a good one. And let's see if you want to check this one out for yourself. This is one of those you can find pretty much anywhere you get your your digital media these days. I watched it on Amazon Prime. In fact, I watch it on Amazon Prime with a handful of listeners to the show. So if you were on that particular viewing. Thanks. Maybe we'll try and do one of those again in the future.
Was pretty fun. But there's also a Blu ray of this one, I believe from Vestron Video, and I've not tried it out for myself, but it's really packed. It has like three different audio commentaries on it and a ton of extra features. So if you want to really go in deep on shopping mall, well that's what you got to put on your Christmas list.
Oh that's interesting just looking it up. I would have assumed that Scream Factory would get their hands on this, but it looks like not.
Yeah. Now, as long as we're talking about where to get movies and also things like shopping malls that you may not encounter as much anymore, we should we should take another moment to talk about video rental stores because on the show before we have mentioned we have plugged Atlanta's only video rental store, video Drome, and I would like to do so again because not only for any of our Atlanta listeners who want to actually rent a DVD or a Blu ray of a film and under
certain circumstances, actually walk the halls, the hallowed halls of video Drum. I want to also point out that if you are not an Atlanta area human, you can still check out their merch store, which is at videodrome dot tv. Their main website is videodromeatl dot com, but videodrome dot tv is a place where you can get like a shirt with their logo on it, stuff like that, stickers, patches. It's pretty fun.
Videodrome is like a store that would be in the background in Chopping Mall.
Yeah, yeah, I would think so, you know, and you do feel like you're kind of going back in time when you go to Videodrome. I hope to go there again soon, in part because some of the movies we discussed in Weird Howse Cinema like that's where we have to go to find them. Not everything can be obtained online and digital streaming form these days, and it's nice
to have that physical experience of the store. All right, we're gonna go ahead and close out on Shopping Mall here today, but obviously we would love to hear from everybody. What did you think about shopping Mall? Did you watch Chopping Mall back in the day. Do you have memories of roaming the various malls during your younger years. We'd love to hear from everybody on that. Just a reminder that Weird House Cinema publishes every Friday in the Stuff
to Blow Your Mind. Feed Core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind continue to publish on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Those are our core science and culture episodes, but Friday, Weirdhouse Cinema is our chance to unwind and get into a weird film instead Huge things.
As always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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