By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
When you’re in the mood to watch a classic horror film, you can’t go wrong with many vintage movies from the ‘80s. The slashers of this decade defined an entire genre, and we now have entire generations of fans who fell in love with horror thanks to iconic characters like Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger. If you’re in the mood for something a little different from horror’s best decade, here’s some good news: you can now stream the instant genre classic Chopping Mall for free on Tubi.
Chopping Mall Is Pure 1980s
The plot of Chopping Mall mashes together two of America’s biggest cultural obsessions from the 1980s. Namely, malls and robots. In this film, a local mall receives a cutting-edge security system in the form of robots who will patrol the mall and keep shoppers and stores alike nice and safe. However, a lightning strike causes these machines to malfunction, resulting in robots hunting and killing everyone they see, starting with some teens whose after-hours party is suddenly transformed into a frantic fight for their lives.
The cast of Chopping Mall is full of quirky character actors who were big in the ‘80s, including Kelli Maroney (best known for Fast Times At Ridgemont High) and Tony O’Dell (best known for The Karate Kid and its popular Netflix spinoff Cobra Kai). Additionally, Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov appear in a fun cameo as the same characters they played in Eating Raoul. Chopping Mall also stars Barbara Crampton, a genuine Scream Queen who has appeared in Re-Animator, Puppet Master, Castle Freak, and countless other horror classics.
In addition to all this great talent in front of the camera, there’s a pretty big genre name behind the camera: Jim Wynorski. He’s not exactly a household name, but this Chopping Mall director was a protege of Roger Corman and brought us other weirdly wonderful horror movies like Deathstalker 2, The Return of Swamp Thing, Sorority House Massacre II, Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time, and many more. In a fun little twist, the director also provides the voice for Chopping Mall’s relentless Killbots.
While Chopping Mall has become a real cult classic over the years, it didn’t impress critics upon its initial release. On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has a critical rating of 55 percent. This means the movie falls 5 points shy of being “fresh” and, like so many horror films before and after, it left professional critics cold.
So, time to answer a question even hotter than a Killbot struck by lightning: why the heck am I recommending that you watch Chopping Mall, a movie few have heard of and that mostly failed to impress the critics? For one thing, this movie offers a little of something old and a little of something new for fans of vintage horror. That is, it has all the trappings of classic slashers right down to the hapless, sex-crazed teens who would be right at home in Crystal Lake, but they’re being hunted down by relentless robots rather than a hockey-mask-wearing psycho.
Another factor in Chopping Mall’s favor is that it offers just the right amount of nostalgia for those who actually grew up in the ‘80s. Later projects like Stranger Things would try to capture the vibe of that decade, but that show could never match the hilarious authenticity of a movie that simply mashed together killer robots and a killer mall. Plus, it feels good to vicariously hang out in such a cool mall, one that you’d likely be tempted to shop at even if it meant dodging laser beams from Killbots (honestly, I’d rather deal with them than a Paul Blart-esque mall cop).
Finally, Chopping Mall is full of great performances. Sure, these aren’t the biggest names in the world, but these actors bring their hapless teens to life in some very memorable ways. Slashers are only as good as their characters, and this eclectic cast makes Chopping Mall one of the best horror films ever made.
Will you find Chopping Mall as entertaining as I did, or will you want to throw this movie in the trash bin outside the food court? You won’t know until you stream it on Tubi for yourself. Come for the Killbots and stay for the philosophical question: is it really a chopping mall if these bionic baddies never do any actual chopping?
