Chopping Mall is what you get when you take horny teenagers and put them up against vigilante overweight R2-D2 triplets in either a great mall laser battle or the deadliest mall laser battle of all time.

However, that’s how it ended, not how it all began. The robots are actually new security system being implemented by the Park Plaza 2000 Shopping Center during the night. It’s not their fault that a handful of teenagers wanted to party in the home furnishing store after hours, getting their jollies on with each other. It’s also not the robots fault that lighting strikes the facilities multiple times during a storm, causing damage to the computer system controlling them. These three robots are just doing their jobs damn it, and its their first night.

Right from the get-go, our three amigos Nerd Robolander, Plucky Ray, and Rusty Bottoms are on the job, taking on the patriarchy and evils of the adult magazine industry when they notice one of the control operators ogling filthy disgusting nudie magazine.

Fuck the fuchsia, it’s Friday

If this movie isn’t a time capsule of its day, I don’t know what could be. Not only does the movie start out with a small montage around the shopping center, but it shows people actively wanting to be there as social activities. With the boom of the internet in the late 90s and early 00s, where online shopping became the standard of commerce, the idea of going to malls and shopping centers became passe. As I’m writing this in 2021 with the Delta Coronavirus picking up steam, I’m already on over a year of not going to the mall at all, let along only because I want to buy something and not have to wait for delivery from Amazon. Thankfully I don’t have to worry about security robots going mental on me.

Another time capsule moment comes with the cook at the restaurant booth that our star vixen Alison is working at on her first week as well. Can you imagine the last time you had someone smoking cigarettes while also preparing your food? No, I don’t consider at your Uncle Reggie’s house on Memorial day. I mean in OSHA regulated establishments of fine dining.

Nonetheless, it’s Friday and Alison’s coworker Suzie convinces Allison to try out a blind date that night in the home furnishing department with herself and some other of Suzie’s friends. Rounding out the cast of our overnight party people are Ferdy, Rick, Linda, Greg, Mike, and Leslie. Who’s going to win the epic mall laser fight? We’ll have to keep watching to find out.

Lets start some murder

The three amigos were originally programmed to only stop and apprehend the scums of the earth needing to filch from your run of the mill malls, but they had bigger aspirations. Promotions don’t come on their own, and they had to think big. Having already taken out the porn ogling perp, they next had to handle the nerd reading their biography “They Came From Outer Space”. When the humans know too much, they can be danger.

Meanwhile, over at the the swinging home furnishing party, everyone’s hooking up, everyone except Alison and Ferdy. First up there’s Rick and Linda, already established as a married couple, so the least of our worries. Next up is Greg and Suzie, where we establish Greg is turned on by pizza toppings. Then we have Mike and Leslie having a dispute about foreplay. Lastly, it’s Alison and Ferdy watching a movie with all their clothes on, like normal teenagers.

Ferdy is trying to be the consummate gentleman by offering to take Alison home before the Park Plaza seals up for the night. What a guy, caring about making sure Alison doesn’t get permanently trapped with all the other horndogs she doesn’t know, at least until like 6am the next morning. Be a Ferdy, guys out there.

No one is really impervious to our amigos. They don’t care if you’re a horny teenager or a disgruntled janitorial staff, if you talk shit, get lit. Yay murder.

Now that the body count is up to three, lets take a brief time out to talk about the hazards of smoking. Smoking kills. It gives you lung cancer, it gets your boyfriend killed when you ask him to go get you a pack down by the phones, it turns your teeth yellow and your lungs into tar that would make Littlefoot cringe. Just don’t do it. Just say no. Oh yeah, Mike gets killed next. We’re up to four deaths! Yay murder.

Unleash laser tag hell

Our boys are fed up, sick, and tired of all these humans reading about their history, ogling women in nudie magazines, and smoking, so it’s time to just take them all out. No survivors! Commence Laser War 1. First up, the smoker, five deaths, off with her head!

At this point the remaining six party animals are clued in on the the glorious murder going on around them, and it’s time to fight back. The girls are sent off to safety in the air ducts, trying to get to the exits. The guys are sent to the sporting good store, where they can get totally not regulation laser tag guns that fire real bullets. Reaching the first official standoff, the guys touting lots of arms were landing damage about as much as I land dates on a Friday night of my own…not at all. At least not until they throw a tank of gas at one of the amigos and shoot the tank to take it out. First murder on the amigo side. RIP Plucky Ray.

Unbeknownst to the boys, the girls have doubled back and are now trying to help take down our amigos with some ammunition of their own. Yes, that’s right, makeshift Molotov cocktails. The boys are getting themselves some more enhanced gas tanks after the success of the first one. It is all out warfare after all, use what has proven successful.

Sadly, fire does not stop an amigo, an amigo can just run over it. Suzie learns this the hard way as an amigo disables her with a swift shot to the leg, and then another to the cocktail she’s carrying. Sadly, Greg is going to have to get his pizza boners from someone new, if he survives the night. Six…six murders…ahahah.

With what happened to his pepperoni sweetheart, Greg is out for robot blood once Ferdy realizes that they could attempt a hostile takeover and crash of the central computer. However, haste makes waste, and well Greg gets wasted in a most gruesome way. Yes, we’re up to seven murders overall, with only half of our plucky horny bunch remaining.

Thank you, have a nice day

In order to hopefully even the odds, and by even I mean vastly outnumber, Alison, Ferdy, Rick, and Linda construct the worst laser tag frontline ever seen on any side of the Mason-Dixon line, making use of clothing store mannequins to add extra targets for our two amigos to get confused by, while still lining up themselves to add in their own firing. It’s all in the numbers. Oh yes, reflective mirrors for our amigos to admire themselves in and suffer from laser tag ricochet. The victory is short lived though as both Rick and Linda are taken out. Woo laser murders! At least they managed to take out Nerd Robolander, leaving just one more for Alison and Ferdy to take out on their own.

Time for them to resume trying to get to the central computer to shut everything down. Ammunition is starting to run short, so what do you do in times of need? Yes, throw things at our amigos, that’ll work! Except they can throw back, and taking a fire extinguisher to the chest is not a pleasant thing. Sorry Ferdy.

It’s up to Alison now, to survive and make it to the morning. Now it’s time to flee to the pet store, where our overweight amigo naturally crashes into literally everything, releasing all the creepy crawly “pets” like spiders and snakes. Thankfully our heroine is able to stay silent long enough to not get caught by Rusty Bottoms.

Hang in there Alison, you’re almost through this! Or don’t hang in there. Oh, good, you survived.

With only a road flare and her wits about her, it was time for Alison’s last stance in the paint store, setting up a beautiful canvas of flammable soup. Flammable soup go boom! Rusty Bottoms go boom too!

Laser War 1 Champion, 1986

Congrats Alison, you’ve won Laser War 1, and your reward is our guy Ferdy. Despite taking that fire extinguisher to the chest, he was only temporarily knocked out, with still a vicious blow to the back of the head that will definitely require stitches. May we all find our own Ferdy out there.

Final thoughts

I don’t miss shopping malls, and after watching Chopping Mall, if I’m ever with a woman and she asks me to go get some cigarettes, I’m noping my way out of there, because smoking kills yourself and your friends. At least it did in 1986.

Extras

Trailer

Streaming Information

You can find it for free with ads at https://tubitv.com/movies/445307/chopping-mall

You can also find it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKyCSbaP_K8