YMMV / Chopping Mall

• Awesome Music: Chuck Cirino's synthesized score is every bit as daft as what's on screen, with its jittery arpeggios and rapid-fire synth bells, and that's exactly what makes it so charming. Here's a sample.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The intro with cameos of Paul and Mary Bland from Eating Raoul making quips at the presentation. Not only is the humor and the performances more broad than the rest of the film but the two characters are never seen again which makes the scene stick out like a sore thumb. That said, a second scene featuring them meant as a pay off to this cameo was writen but never filmed.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the 2020s, a small number of American shopping malls began employing actual security robots, with those made by the company Knightscope even bearing a superficial resemblance to those from this movie.
• Signature Scene: The "Laser Head Explosion" scene.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The '80s were the golden age of the mall, and it shows on screen. As well, two deaths happen because one of the slasher victims went out to buy cigarettes from a machine (since 2010, the FDA banned their placement anywhere that is not an adults-only facility like bars).
• Vindicated by History: More commercially, not really critically. When the movie first was first released in 1986, it was a box office bomb. Producer Roger Corman and the creators blamed this on the film's original title, Killbots, which they thought made audiences believe the film was some sort of Transformers-type cartoon movie (and it didn't help that The Transformers: The Movie was released at the same time). When they changed the title to its current one, it did substantially better business at the box office.

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