Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick. And oh boy, we got a
Speaker 3: treat for you this week. Rob, your pick was Chopping Mall.
Speaker 2: That's right, because we're in the midst of the holiday
Speaker 2: shopping season here in America, so it just absolutely made
Speaker 2: sense to watch Chopping Mall. Shopping Mall is not a
Speaker 2: holiday horror movie or a holiday movie at all, but
Speaker 2: it concerns the shopping mall, you know, the original cathedrals
Speaker 2: of consumerism, giant interior spaces where you could eat, shop,
Speaker 2: hang out when permitted by security, and of course, during
Speaker 2: the holidays, meet Santa Claus himself or some representative of
Speaker 2: Santa Claus within this giant, enclosed space.
Speaker 3: Now, when I was a teenager, there was a brief
Speaker 3: time when I actually did hang out at the shopping mall,
Speaker 3: just like in the movies, because it's very convenient when
Speaker 3: you're like fourteen, you don't have your own car. You
Speaker 3: want to hang out with your friends at a place
Speaker 3: where you're not like at somebody's house with their parents,
Speaker 3: but you don't really have anywhere else to go. You
Speaker 3: can get dropped off at the mall and hang out there.
Speaker 3: But right at the time that I was like getting
Speaker 3: into a groove of hangouts at the mall, our local
Speaker 3: mall I think banned unaccompanied miners because some of us
Speaker 3: were getting into trouble.
Speaker 2: Apparently, Yeah, yeah, that was That was frequently the issue,
Speaker 2: wasn't it. I don't remember. I don't think I ever
Speaker 2: went to the mall frequently enough to run a foul
Speaker 2: of security. But I remember it being an ideal destination
Speaker 2: as like a junior high kid and as a teenager
Speaker 2: a bit, you know, because you go there, you got
Speaker 2: the food, you got the arcade, You've got the you know,
Speaker 2: the Spencer's gift stores and the like the rock band
Speaker 2: T shirt store. You know, it feels like you're you're
Speaker 2: entering into a wider world of adult responsibility and possibilities
Speaker 2: when you go into the mall.
Speaker 3: And extreme alienation and religious significance.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So yes. Chopping Mall is a nineteen eighty six film,
Speaker 2: and just the fact that it came out in eighty
Speaker 2: six is pretty amazing, because nineteen eighty six is an
Speaker 2: amazing year for genre cinema, but the genre that I
Speaker 2: am yeah, oh yeah, that's try You came out in
Speaker 2: eighty six, so you and this movie are basically siblings.
Speaker 2: Of course. The other big horror movie that's filmed in
Speaker 2: the mall is George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, which
Speaker 2: is I guess you could say, you know. Donn of
Speaker 2: the Dead is more of a intentional satire of consumerism
Speaker 2: and the American use of malls, where characters end up
Speaker 2: going there during a zombie apocalypse and encountering all of
Speaker 2: these zombified humans that are just sort of wandering about
Speaker 2: the mall. Chopping Mall is a little lighter on the satire,
Speaker 2: but is is still a heck of a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: Well, I say, no, Chopping Mall is heavy on the satire,
Speaker 3: but the tone of the satire is lighter. Yes, it's
Speaker 3: like when when when Dona the I mean, I love
Speaker 3: Donna the Dead, but but when it decides to say something,
Speaker 3: it's going to like sort of grab you by the
Speaker 3: collar and say something at you. It's it's very heavy handed.
Speaker 3: Chopping Mall has a I mean, let's let's be clear,
Speaker 3: Chopping Mall is is just sleezy eighty slasher trash, but
Speaker 3: it's a kind of transcendent sleezy eighty slasher trash because
Speaker 3: it has a real spirit of fun and it's like
Speaker 3: sour cream and onion flavored. It's just really spunky.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's when it has something to say about malls
Speaker 2: and consumers and it's it's it's more of a snicker
Speaker 2: as opposed to a loud proclamation to your point. And uh,
Speaker 2: and I will say, well, you could argue that there's
Speaker 2: some sleezy aspects to the plot. A lot of the
Speaker 2: sleazier aspects feel like like they're thirteen year old sleezy
Speaker 2: as opposed to like, you know, thirty year old sleezy.
Speaker 3: I guess they're not night killer sleazy. Yeah, you're not
Speaker 3: going to the real dark side.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's radied r, but you know it's
Speaker 2: not gonna haunt your memories or anything.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess we get into weird territory because I realized,
Speaker 3: like I just assumed from the beginning that the listeners
Speaker 3: would always realize the movies we're talking about on Weird
Speaker 3: House are almost never for kids. But we did recently
Speaker 3: talk about an Ewok adventure, so there may be some
Speaker 3: mixed signals going on now unless we say otherwise, the
Speaker 3: movies we talk about on Weird House Cinema are not
Speaker 3: for children.
Speaker 2: Correct, So I think the first place to start with
Speaker 2: this one is just is to talk about the title
Speaker 2: of the picture and the posters that came out the
Speaker 2: VHS cover art as well promoting this film, because it's excellent,
Speaker 2: but it's also really misleading. Like I remember seeing the
Speaker 2: poster or box art when I was a kid, and
Speaker 2: it says shopping mall, and depending on the copy, it's
Speaker 2: either in like blood font or like dripping chrome font,
Speaker 2: and in either case, the centerpiece is a red paper
Speaker 2: shopping bag that is torn and to varying degrees, loaded
Speaker 2: with body parts like somebody's just chop some people up
Speaker 2: put them in a shopping bag, and then there is
Speaker 2: some sort of monstrous hand holding the bag. On one
Speaker 2: poster it looks pretty much like like a big medieval gauntlet,
Speaker 2: and on the other poster it looks like a slightly
Speaker 2: cybernetic goblin hand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so what these bags definitely have in common is
Speaker 3: the contents, which are body parts ahead the title chopping mall,
Speaker 3: but the hand. The difference in the hand is fascinating
Speaker 3: and confusing and strange. What were they trying to say
Speaker 3: about this film that in one version it's the Rollerball glove,
Speaker 3: and then the other one it is a robot monster.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The robot monster hand too, looks a whole lot
Speaker 2: like the disembodied hand from the poster for the American
Speaker 2: Haunted House movie House that came out the year before,
Speaker 2: which is of course a very signature poster as well.
Speaker 2: This disembodied hand, I think putting a key in a
Speaker 2: door lock.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. But the rollerball glove is interesting too.
Speaker 3: It's got like the studs and the razors on the knuckles.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you've ever seen the I must
Speaker 3: confess I've actually never seen the James Kahn movie Rollerball,
Speaker 3: but I'm to understand it's about some kind of dystopian
Speaker 3: future death sport that where the characters wear these leather
Speaker 3: gloves that have metal studs on all the knuckles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the poster vhs RT for Rollerball prominently features
Speaker 2: that spiked fist of James Khan.
Speaker 3: So which came out first Rollerball or Chopping mall O
Speaker 3: Rollerball for sure?
Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah, so I think one of the things
Speaker 2: that explains all of this is the fact that this
Speaker 2: movie chopping mall the Corman camp because this is ultimately
Speaker 2: a Roger Corman production. I think Julie Corman, his wife,
Speaker 2: is actually the producer, but it's a Corman property. They
Speaker 2: tried to put it out with the name Kilbots, prominently
Speaker 2: featuring one of the killer robots that's in the film
Speaker 2: on the poster, and apparently it didn't do as well.
Speaker 2: So Corman did a trick that he had done previously,
Speaker 2: and that is take the film, repackage it, give it
Speaker 2: a new title, new poster, arc put it out again,
Speaker 2: and strike gold.
Speaker 3: It's a whole new thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They'd done something similar with the nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 2: film Screamers, which was an American release of the Italian
Speaker 2: film Island of the Fishmen, and they put it out
Speaker 2: as something Weights in the Dark. Didn't work, so they
Speaker 2: took it back and Corman actually got this guy, Jim
Speaker 2: wy Norski to produce some new opening footage for it.
Speaker 2: They gave it a new title, Screamers, and then it
Speaker 2: did pretty well.
Speaker 3: This is the one about the people who shipwreck on
Speaker 3: an island and there's like a mad scientist there who
Speaker 3: has created human fish hybrids.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's fabulous and I would love to back
Speaker 2: and discuss it in a future episode, but I bring
Speaker 2: it up here. Is just an example of the kind
Speaker 2: of stuff that the Corman camp would do to figure
Speaker 2: out just a sweet spot for promoting a film, and
Speaker 2: in this case that what they seem to get was, well,
Speaker 2: the audience isn't really interested in a killer robot movie
Speaker 2: with this kind of like old fashioned, clunky robot, but
Speaker 2: if we sell it as a slasher picture, then we
Speaker 2: got them.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a huge difference. The poster for Chopping Mall.
Speaker 3: I see that and I'm like, oh, I'm in the
Speaker 3: poster for Killbots. I don't know. It looks like I've
Speaker 3: seen this before and I had not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember seeing the box or the post art
Speaker 2: for Chopping Mall as a kid and being too afraid
Speaker 2: to look at the back of the box. But in
Speaker 2: my mind I knew that it had to be a
Speaker 2: film about a crazy guy in a big metal glove
Speaker 2: who kills people in a shopping mall. Like that was
Speaker 2: the whole plot I've formed in my head, And that's
Speaker 2: pretty far from the truth. Yeah, this is a killer
Speaker 2: robot movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you would have imagined this was like a slasher
Speaker 3: movie that involved I don't know, weapons lifted from KB
Speaker 3: Toys or something. Yeah, or what was the oh Man?
Speaker 3: The was it Camelot? The mall music store? Yeah, and
Speaker 3: the I remember everything there was always really expensive, Like
Speaker 3: the CDs were twenty two dollars and I was like,
Speaker 3: how can you buy that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was an age when when trying out new
Speaker 2: music it was a totally different scenario. Like today, you
Speaker 2: try out multiple albums per day if you want via
Speaker 2: you know, pretty much any paid subscription or even not
Speaker 2: paying just going on YouTube and stuff. But back then,
Speaker 2: it was like, all right, I'm going to drop twenty
Speaker 2: bucks on this new album. I don't know what it's
Speaker 2: going to be, like, I haven't heard it. It might
Speaker 2: be terrible, I might have I'm just going to listen
Speaker 2: to it over and over again, though, and it at
Speaker 2: least forced myself to like one song because this is
Speaker 2: what I'm listening to this month, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was a very different time because of
Speaker 3: the monetary and time investment involved in discovering new music.
Speaker 3: It seems like once you found something, you really liked
Speaker 3: it was more special. Yeah, maybe that's just idealizing the past.
Speaker 2: No, no, but you know, this is all really getting it.
Speaker 2: I think one of the key things about Chopping Mall
Speaker 2: that's so lovable is that Chopping Mall is an historic document,
Speaker 2: you know, Like so much of my appreciation of the
Speaker 2: film is the fact that, yeah, they filmed it in
Speaker 2: a real mall, an enormous mall. I'm all with three floors,
Speaker 2: and you see all these authentic stores in the background,
Speaker 2: and it just it feels like some sort of a
Speaker 2: testament to this this lost or fading tradition of American commercialism.
Speaker 3: It also very much reminds me of the mall in
Speaker 3: which scenes are shot in the movie Commando, and I
Speaker 3: wonder if it is literally the same mall that they used.
Speaker 2: To Well, let's go ahead and hit the elevator pitch
Speaker 2: for this one.
Speaker 3: Okay, give it to me, Okay.
Speaker 2: Part Plaza Mall has just updated its security system with
Speaker 2: state of the art lockdown systems and three kill bots.
Speaker 2: I don't think they call them killbots, but they're protectors,
Speaker 2: protectors to patrol throughout the mall. So obviously this is
Speaker 2: a perfect time for several couples several teen couples to
Speaker 2: have a lockdown party inside one of the stores, inside
Speaker 2: of a furniture store. What could possibly go wrong?
Speaker 3: It's great, It's like, I mean, one of the funny
Speaker 3: things is the presumption and actually I can believe this
Speaker 3: thinking about it now, that the party teens would not
Speaker 3: be made aware of the fact that there are lethal
Speaker 3: robots rolling around in the mall at night, even though
Speaker 3: they work there. It's just like the need to know basis,
Speaker 3: you work here, but you don't need to know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they didn't put out a mimo or anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, should we hit some trailer audio?
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's listen to some of this fabulous trailer.
Speaker 3: They broke into the mall or the wildest all night
Speaker 3: party of their lives.
Speaker 1: And technique.
Speaker 2: But you're never alone.
Speaker 3: In the chumping.
Speaker 2: What's that robots?
Speaker 3: Jumping hall? We're shopping costs you an arm and a leg?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 3: Where'd this thing come from?
Speaker 2: All right? Well, we mentioned the director and writer already,
Speaker 2: and that is jim Y Norski, who again was part
Speaker 2: of the Roger Corman camp there. He was born in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty, still alive today as of this recording, and
Speaker 2: is just a career b cinema guy. This was only
Speaker 2: his second film. It was a follow up to nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty four's Lost Empire, which apparently was a fantasy film.
Speaker 2: I have not seen it, but I did read that
Speaker 2: Jim later said that Roger Corman hated the movie, but
Speaker 2: he thought that he quote put the camera in some
Speaker 2: interesting places and the girls were pretty, so that was
Speaker 2: enough to get him sort of pull him into the
Speaker 2: orbit of Roger Korman. But I did notice that Alan
Speaker 2: Howarth did the music for it and has Angus Scrim
Speaker 2: in it, So how bad could it possibly be?
Speaker 3: Wait? Was Angus scrim in this movie?
Speaker 2: He is? Yes, yeah, yeah, I'll go ahead and point out.
Speaker 2: Angus scrim the tall Man of the Phantasm movies has
Speaker 2: a very brief cameo. It's not even a cameo because
Speaker 2: he's not He's under an assumed name and you never
Speaker 2: see his face. But he's an individual who stands up
Speaker 2: and asks a question at the Kilbot press conference in
Speaker 2: the early stage of the movie.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, that was him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but yeah, unless you're looking for it,
Speaker 2: you'll totally miss it. So anyway, yeah, Jim Wainorski, here
Speaker 2: he goes on from this film to direct Death Stalker two.
Speaker 2: He directed The Return Swamp Thing. He has one hundred
Speaker 2: and four director credits on IMDb, including a fair amount
Speaker 2: of exploitation films, some late night Cinemax style films thrown
Speaker 2: in there, but also family films, some kind of cringey
Speaker 2: looking parody films from recent years, but just a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff all over the map, Yeah, all over the map. Like,
Speaker 2: some of it looks very interesting, some of it you
Speaker 2: want to skip on. But but yeah, he's had quite
Speaker 2: a career.
Speaker 3: It's hard to believe that this was made by the
Speaker 3: same person who made Death Stalker two, because Death Stalker
Speaker 3: two is just a sand sandwich. It's just awful. Then
Speaker 3: this is, I mean, comparatively, this movie is I mean again,
Speaker 3: it is trash, but it's very it's pretty like light
Speaker 3: fun trash.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah it is. It's it's more fast food, you know.
Speaker 2: And and it also this is something worth pointing out.
Speaker 2: It knows it's fast food, but in a way that
Speaker 2: oddly works. It's very rare to find that in a
Speaker 2: film today. You know, so many self aware b movies
Speaker 2: are just difficult to tolerate. But this and somehow it
Speaker 2: would it walks that line and does a good job
Speaker 2: with it.
Speaker 3: We were just talking about this recently off mic about
Speaker 3: how there are so few intentionally bad, successfully funny movies
Speaker 3: and TV shows, and now you know, obviously we're doing
Speaker 3: this show, so we clearly love bad movies. But but like,
Speaker 3: it's hard to think of people who do it on
Speaker 3: purpose and it works. We thought of Garth Marenghi's Dark
Speaker 3: Place bad on purpose, very funny. This movie, I think
Speaker 3: fits that category, but it's really quite rare. Most of
Speaker 3: the time, it just hurts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And one of the things that I was saying
Speaker 2: about Garth Marenghi's Dark Place is that, well, it works
Speaker 2: because it has this kind of dry sensibility. But Chopping
Speaker 2: Mall does not have a dry sensibility. So you know,
Speaker 2: my reasoning there doesn't really apply to this film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wonder all.
Speaker 2: Right, So, as we mentioned Chopping Mall concerns, I think
Speaker 2: four different couples, and they are difficult to keep track
Speaker 2: of until they start dying because they all basically look alike.
Speaker 2: As I was discussing the film with my wife last night,
Speaker 2: I think this film's idea of diversity is casting one
Speaker 2: non blonde female in the whole picture, so it's easy
Speaker 2: to lose track of who's who. We're not going to
Speaker 2: mention all of the teen players here, but we'll mention
Speaker 2: a few of them. Top billing goes to Kelly Moroney.
Speaker 2: She was also the star of Night of the Comment
Speaker 2: in eighty four.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's another great one. We shall come back to that.
Speaker 2: The real standout team is Mike, the beefy one, the
Speaker 2: gum Shower, and he's played by John Terleski. Very memorable
Speaker 2: part of this film. But he's one of these guys
Speaker 2: that goes on to have quite a career. Well, first
Speaker 2: of all, he goes on to play the death Stalker
Speaker 2: in Death Stalker two, but he went on to act
Speaker 2: in a bunch of stuff and directed quite a bit,
Speaker 2: including just a ton of steady mainstream TV work in
Speaker 2: recent years, sixpisodes of the Blacklist, twenty six episodes of Castle,
Speaker 2: and then in two thousand and five, he wrote and
Speaker 2: directed a movie about.
Speaker 3: Cerberus from Greek mythology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean I haven't seen it. I've only
Speaker 2: seen the trailer. I can't imagine. It's too versed in
Speaker 2: Greek mythology, but it exists.
Speaker 3: I mean, this guy is an amazing specimen. So we're
Speaker 3: gonna talk. I guess once we get into the full
Speaker 3: plot breakdown, I'll mention some of the main teens. But
Speaker 3: this guy is just a peak specimen of the like
Speaker 3: eighties jock Bully character, and he's so good. He's just
Speaker 3: a can of Dentte Moore. He's this knuckleneck guy with
Speaker 3: the smirks. It's fabulous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's shirtless most of the film. It's wonderful, or
Speaker 2: most of the film during which he's alive. Because obviously
Speaker 2: he's the character that's introduced. You're like, oh, this guy's
Speaker 2: this guy's biding it. This guy's getting killed by a
Speaker 2: robot for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, the film also features the legendary Barbara Crampton as Susie,
Speaker 2: one of the the teens were discussing here. Now. She's
Speaker 2: a true screen queen and genre staple, especially in Stuart
Speaker 2: Gordon films. She got her start in Brian de Palmer's
Speaker 2: Body Double, but then she went on to act in Reanimator,
Speaker 2: from Beyond, Puppet Master, Transfers to Robot Wars, Castle Freaks,
Speaker 2: Space Truckers. Yeah, she's been in a ton of stuff.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's Robot Wars. But I thought for a second
Speaker 3: you were talking about Robot Jocks, which is I think
Speaker 3: also a Stuart Gordon movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, robot Jocks is really Good's that's one that's kind
Speaker 2: of in my short list to scout out to see
Speaker 2: if that's one we need to discuss here.
Speaker 3: Oh oh it's coming.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, another cult icon that's in this film, though
Speaker 2: very briefly, is Mary warrenov plays. She plays a character
Speaker 2: that we're told is Mary Bland alongside Paul Bland played
Speaker 2: by Paul Bartell. I'll get to in just a second
Speaker 2: there at present only briefly in the film, at that
Speaker 2: Kilbot press conference that it occurs.
Speaker 3: Early on in the film.
Speaker 2: Now, she's very interesting. She started out as a Warhol
Speaker 2: superstar in the eighties, one of Andy Warhol's followers and
Speaker 2: celebrity people. But then she acted in a ton of
Speaker 2: B movies, especially Corman films. She did a lot of
Speaker 2: TV and stage work, and she's one of these people
Speaker 2: that I always smile when she shows up in a
Speaker 2: film because she's always an absolute delight. And the cool
Speaker 2: thing is you often find her alongside this guy Paul Bartell,
Speaker 2: who again is playing the bearded gentleman setting next to her.
Speaker 2: And this is interesting because he's most famous for writing
Speaker 2: and directing the horror comedy Eating Rahul in nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 2: about a pair of restaurant tours who turned to murder.
Speaker 2: And he plays Paul Bland in that, and Mary plays
Speaker 2: Mary Bland in that. So in Chopping Mall, they are
Speaker 2: reprising these.
Speaker 3: Roles the core cinematic universe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And so there you know, it's all just
Speaker 2: a big wink to this other movie now and within
Speaker 2: the Corman universe. Bartel also directed Corman's Death Race two thousand,
Speaker 2: among a slew of other films.
Speaker 3: Oh that's interesting, another bad one. Man. We are just
Speaker 3: rattling off the list of rabbit holes to go down today.
Speaker 3: I should mention before we move on from Mary, warnoff
Speaker 3: that she is also fantastic in a more recent horror movie,
Speaker 3: The actually quite scary and extremely disturbing, extremely good House
Speaker 3: of the Devil, directed by Ty West.
Speaker 2: Oh cool. I haven't seen that yet, but if she's
Speaker 2: in it, I'm interested.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's great. And it's also got Tom Noonan in it,
Speaker 3: who's oh creepy as he always is. But I don't
Speaker 3: know I don't want to write it off as just like, well,
Speaker 3: those are his character traits. I mean, tom Noonan is
Speaker 3: a great actor, but also just like eh.
Speaker 2: He plays a great, great creep for sure. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 2: I mean there's just some again, like you said, so
Speaker 2: many rabbit holes in the cast of this film, because
Speaker 2: it also has Dick Miller. Oh.
Speaker 3: Dick Miller is also a classic Corman player, going all
Speaker 3: the way back.
Speaker 2: He was.
Speaker 3: He starred in some sixties Coorman movies, Not of This Earth.
Speaker 3: He's got a great small role in that. He's just wonderful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of you will probably remember him from
Speaker 2: Grimlins Grimlins two. He was in the Howling piranha little Shop,
Speaker 2: the Little Shop of Ours, Night of the Creeps, and
Speaker 2: then one of the scenes that I really love him in. Again,
Speaker 2: he's often in the little small parts and things, but
Speaker 2: he was in the Terminator. He was the gun shop clerk.
Speaker 2: Do you remember that scene, Joe, of course.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one of these weapons is ideal for home defense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's that great. In exchange for the terminators rattling
Speaker 2: off this list of weapons and he says saves plasma
Speaker 2: rifle and the forty watt rage and Miller says, Hey,
Speaker 2: just what you see pal right, it's great.
Speaker 3: I have to think that maybe there's a little bit
Speaker 3: of subtle political commentary in that scene. Was this mur
Speaker 3: robot from the future is just listing this giant catalog
Speaker 3: of weapons that he needs to murder people with, and
Speaker 3: the guy's like, yeah, defend your home.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So Dick Miller plays you know, I guess you
Speaker 2: know he had headed a type. He plays his kind
Speaker 2: of snappy every man, you know, and that's what he
Speaker 2: plays in this He's a janitor who dares to stand
Speaker 2: up to the killer robot and gets electrocuted for it.
Speaker 3: Oh man, the cameos just don't stop. Though. There is
Speaker 3: another amazing character actor in this movie, Garrett Graham, who's
Speaker 3: in He's in this movie for like two minutes. He
Speaker 3: just plays like a guy in a lab coat who
Speaker 3: gets murdered. But I love Garrett Graham, and this is
Speaker 3: main I mean, I love everything I've seen him in. Well,
Speaker 3: I don't know if I love all the movies, but
Speaker 3: always love him. Yeah, And he is absolutely one of
Speaker 3: the highlights of the Phantom of the Paradise, a great
Speaker 3: Brian De Palma movie, where he plays the the I
Speaker 3: don't even know how to describe him. This like Frankenstein
Speaker 3: rock star named Beef.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's accurate. He has these eyes,
Speaker 2: these very expressive, kind of like bugged out eyes some people.
Speaker 2: Some people may recognize him as Bud the Chud from
Speaker 2: Chud to Bud the Chud.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but there's the titular Budd the Judge.
Speaker 2: He is he is. I really loved him in the
Speaker 2: movie Terror Vision, which also came out in eighty six
Speaker 2: and also had Mary Warrenov in it. That's a film
Speaker 2: I absolutely adore, and we may have to come back
Speaker 2: to that one in the future.
Speaker 3: This movie is like a trawler nets just sucking in
Speaker 3: like every great weird character actor and Corman player.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now we already mentioned Angus scrim Barely shows up
Speaker 2: apparently was credited as Lawrence Guy on this one. And
Speaker 2: then oh and then as a cameo, Julie Corman, the producer,
Speaker 2: shows up as a mall shopper with a baby. Again.
Speaker 2: Corman is Roger Corman's wife. And as far as other
Speaker 2: folks involved in the film, I mean, I didn't follow
Speaker 2: every rabbit hole, but I did notice that Carol Clements
Speaker 2: was the art director who also worked on the nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty six film Vamp, an excellent vampire film starring Grace
Speaker 2: Jones and Billy Drago, which also has kind of a
Speaker 2: snazzy look to it.
Speaker 3: Oh wait a second, is that the one about like
Speaker 3: the college kids who go to the vampire town that's
Speaker 3: got all the very expressionist sets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Grace Jones is like this vampire dancer. Okay,
Speaker 2: and it has a great cast of b players as well,
Speaker 2: but it also has like a definite style, at least
Speaker 2: in some of the scenes.
Speaker 3: It's been a long time, but I remember really liking
Speaker 3: that one. Yeah, okay, well is it time to get
Speaker 3: into the full plot breakdown? I mean to the extent
Speaker 3: that this movie has.
Speaker 2: One yeah, yeah, this one. This is a This is
Speaker 2: a movie that knows once it has your attention, it
Speaker 2: needs to keep going. I think the version I watched anyway,
Speaker 2: is like seventy seven minutes, so there's only so much
Speaker 2: plot here, but it's all well done.
Speaker 3: I always respect that. Actually, and in a movie that
Speaker 3: knows its trash and is like, look, we're going to
Speaker 3: get to the point. It's going to be really short.
Speaker 3: I've said this a million times now about Attack of
Speaker 3: the crab Monsters. It's like a sixty two minute movie.
Speaker 3: I mean, how can you beat it? It's just amazing.
Speaker 3: Why drag it out for another twenty minutes? Yeah, and
Speaker 3: I would say that Chopping Mall is of the same philosophy.
Speaker 3: It's something like seventy seven minutes long including the credits.
Speaker 3: But so what happens at the very beginning. We begin
Speaker 3: with the scene of a robbery. You've got one of
Speaker 3: these eighties movie punks. He's this sallow leather jacket punk
Speaker 3: who breaks the glass of a jewelry store and snatches
Speaker 3: a bunch of precious jewels out of the window in
Speaker 3: an otherwise apparently just deserted mall. And so you think
Speaker 3: he's going to get away with the jewels, but then
Speaker 3: there's a robot. He is pursued by a robot who
Speaker 3: I was wondering how you were going to describe the
Speaker 3: look of the kill bots in this movie. My feeling
Speaker 3: was that they look like Alpha five from The Power
Speaker 3: Rangers on the head portion but with tank treads.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they're kind of like you have to kind
Speaker 2: of define it by referencing other robots. There's a little
Speaker 2: bit of Johnny five in there. There's a little bit
Speaker 2: of Dayek in there. I'm not sure what else to
Speaker 2: compare it. Definitely that Power Rangers bot you mentioned. He
Speaker 2: does have a head like that, kind of a big
Speaker 2: flying saucer head.
Speaker 3: The Dalak point is a good one. Alpha five dalk
Speaker 3: I would say, yeah, that's pretty much perfect. So the
Speaker 3: Alpha five Dalek is is running after the robber, rolling
Speaker 3: after the robber, and the robbers starts shooting at it
Speaker 3: with his revolver. Surely I can stop this metal robot
Speaker 3: with with this little gun. Somebody out there needs to
Speaker 3: make a feature length documentary film that is just about
Speaker 3: the shot where some meat head in a movie is
Speaker 3: shooting a gun at a killer robot and they see
Speaker 3: the puny bullets bouncing off and doing nassing, and then
Speaker 3: they go w and the terror comes over their face
Speaker 3: and then they either drop the gun or throw the gun.
Speaker 3: Alpha five does not react to these gunshots at all.
Speaker 3: It does not even give you an AIII. He tases
Speaker 3: the crook and then we get a the end title,
Speaker 3: which was a very nice little gag. But then it
Speaker 3: turns out this is a film within a film, and
Speaker 3: we're getting a demonstration of the latest in cutting edge
Speaker 3: security technology, the Protector one oh one series robots, and
Speaker 3: of course, as you mentioned, then we pull back we
Speaker 3: see an audience there observing this film. Hype Man's about
Speaker 3: to show up, and we see paulp. Bartel and Mary
Speaker 3: Warren of and the audience wearing their name tags, so
Speaker 3: we know that they're actually playing the same characters they
Speaker 3: were in the other movies we've already seen. And I
Speaker 3: love what we get. This guy who runs up, who's
Speaker 3: this like Royce McCutcheon type hype man, you know, bring
Speaker 3: me some of that moon money, and he assures us
Speaker 3: that the Protectors do not kill. But Paul Bartel is
Speaker 3: not buying it. He's like, I don't know, he looked
Speaker 3: pretty dead to me. But Royce McCutcheon assures the audience
Speaker 3: that the punk is merely neutralized until he can be
Speaker 3: located by law enforcement. And then he does this survey
Speaker 3: of all their weapons, which is great. He talks about
Speaker 3: how they've got sleep darts and they have lasers positioned
Speaker 3: here that can cut through any sort of debris, which
Speaker 3: sounds very useful in a security robot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like what kind of debris are they supposed to
Speaker 2: be cutting through in the mall. And as for the
Speaker 2: sleep darts, that sounds good, but I can't remember do
Speaker 2: we see any sleep darts deployed in this film.
Speaker 3: I don't remember any sleep darts. I remember the robots.
Speaker 3: So they use their little pincer things to like slash
Speaker 3: people's necks, and they use their lasers to blow up
Speaker 3: people's heads.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they use those lasers.
Speaker 3: And they're like Imperial storm troopers, like they can't aim
Speaker 3: at all, but.
Speaker 2: They get coverage. They get coverage with the spray.
Speaker 3: That's right, they're laying down suppressing fire.
Speaker 2: I have to say the killbots here, they look pretty good,
Speaker 2: you know. I mean you look at the overall design
Speaker 2: and it's what doesn't look thrown together. You know, it's
Speaker 2: not humanoid at all. It has like four arms that
Speaker 2: are very much like the arms of some sort of
Speaker 2: like a lunar probe or something. So it's a bit
Speaker 2: shocking if you go into it expecting that metal claw,
Speaker 2: metal hand from the poster or the box art. But
Speaker 2: I think the end result looks pretty good.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean they're lovable deubery killer robots. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so oh yeah, and we get this one of
Speaker 3: the things I wanted to flag that we already talked
Speaker 3: about this a bit, is that they're called protectors, because
Speaker 3: that just seems like that is actually, I think, pretty
Speaker 3: perfect satire in a very contained little capsule, because they
Speaker 3: don't seem to be designed for protecting anything that's alive.
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe the pets in the pet store,
Speaker 3: but the goal appears to be to quote neutralize shoplifters,
Speaker 3: and yet they're called protectors. So I think the branding
Speaker 3: satire is very on point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like they they want to protect merchandise from perceived thieves,
Speaker 2: even if it means absolutely destroying a store to do it,
Speaker 2: cutting through it with those lasers, rolling through it like
Speaker 2: a tank, whatever, it takes.
Speaker 3: Warning warning, like they see a guy in a mohawk
Speaker 3: just walking by the pet store and their eyes glow red.
Speaker 3: But one of the other things I really like in
Speaker 3: this hype speech is that we get McCutcheon starts laying
Speaker 3: out like Chekhov's rules. So he says there are steel
Speaker 3: security doors that lock the mall at night so that
Speaker 3: no one can get in. Of course, the implication is
Speaker 3: or out. You also get the the you get to
Speaker 3: get a divulged that the robots protect the mall itself
Speaker 3: but cannot enter the individual stores, which holds up for
Speaker 3: a bit in the movie. But you can guess this
Speaker 3: will lead to at least a temporary game of mal
Speaker 3: is Lava where you have to hop from store to store.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is is again kind of reminiscent of Donna
Speaker 2: the Dad, where there was this idea of like getting
Speaker 2: from one store to the next, and if the store
Speaker 2: was locked out, the zombies couldn't get in.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then also they will supposedly not harm anyone
Speaker 3: who has a security badge. So I will say it
Speaker 3: sets up both of these rules, and they hold for
Speaker 3: about a third of the movie, and then do not.
Speaker 2: Hold right, and there's yeah, there's not. Well, there is
Speaker 2: one reason for why it doesn't work, but there's not
Speaker 2: not a lot of time is given to really explaining
Speaker 2: what went wrong here.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, we got to get to that. But then,
Speaker 3: of course Royce McCutcheon tells us, trust me, absolutely nothing
Speaker 3: can go wrong. Then we cut to an opening credit
Speaker 3: sequence that is dynamite, So you got this synth sequence
Speaker 3: or terminator music, and just vignettes from the galleria. We
Speaker 3: witness this lady navigating a crowded food court full of
Speaker 3: rude people pushing around, and she's got a tray full
Speaker 3: of meatball subs and these gallon sized Coca Cola cups. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and then go to an arcade in which adult men
Speaker 3: are shoving children out of the way for a turn
Speaker 3: at the Defender cabinet. There are a bunch of beauty
Speaker 3: pageant contestants in bikinis just going up and down the escalators.
Speaker 3: We see a makeout sash happening on one of the
Speaker 3: benches down on the lower level that seems actually kind
Speaker 3: of sweet, and then it's, I don't know, the whole
Speaker 3: thing's very glorious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is like the dream of Mall America presented
Speaker 2: to you, like the idea, the ideal mall experience.
Speaker 3: But eventually, of course we're going to meet some youths
Speaker 3: who work in the mall, and I think these are
Speaker 3: basically our main character is as you alluded to earlier,
Speaker 3: it really is not even worth trying to distinguish them
Speaker 3: all that much, and they're just like they're teens who
Speaker 3: are up to no good. There are a couple of
Speaker 3: girls who work in a pizza parlor. There are some
Speaker 3: bad boys who work in a furniture store, or maybe
Speaker 3: it's a department store. I don't know. It's just got
Speaker 3: a lot of stuff in it, but mainly furniture. In
Speaker 3: the furniture are planning a party. They are going to
Speaker 3: get some beer and then they're gonna get up to
Speaker 3: no good in the store after hours. And there's a
Speaker 3: great scene where one of the main three guys you
Speaker 3: meet at first is like, you've got your low confidence nerd,
Speaker 3: and then you've got this preppy izod chipmunk guy who
Speaker 3: looks like he's gonna go pledge Delta house. And then
Speaker 3: you've got the knuckleneck jock bully, the terleski guy who
Speaker 3: is just exquisite. And there's a great part where they're
Speaker 3: trying to talk the nerd into partying, and eventually they
Speaker 3: win him over and he's like, okay, okay, let's party.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I mean, basically, true to form, you know
Speaker 2: that the nerdiest guy and the nerdiest girl are going
Speaker 2: to be the ones that survive. And really this is
Speaker 2: cemented when as the party progresses, everybody else is making
Speaker 2: out and whatnot, but these two are settled in on
Speaker 2: a couch in the furniture store and what are they
Speaker 2: watching on the TV?
Speaker 3: Oh? Man, it's Attack of the Crab Monsters. This was
Speaker 3: one of my favorite moments in the movie. Wait, what
Speaker 3: did you think about this when you saw it?
Speaker 2: I loved it. I was like, yep, I mean part
Speaker 2: of it, I think is knowing that it's your one
Speaker 2: of your favorite films and yeah, and also that it's
Speaker 2: just there's something about this being a Corman production, and
Speaker 2: like the worship of Corman cinema within the film feels Yeah,
Speaker 2: it feels perfect.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So they're watching Attack of the Crab Monster is
Speaker 3: a late fifties Corman classic drive in movie classic. I
Speaker 3: think I mentioned it already earlier on. It's like sixty
Speaker 3: minutes long. It's about giant psychic crabs that are created
Speaker 3: by atomic radiation. And they're not just watching the movie,
Speaker 3: they're also watching the best scene in the movie, which
Speaker 3: is the part right at the end after the heroes
Speaker 3: blow off one of the crab's giant claws. The psychic
Speaker 3: crab taunts them by saying, so you have wounded me
Speaker 3: very well. I will grow a new claw, but will
Speaker 3: you grow new lives when I have taken yours from you?
Speaker 3: That my friends is Corn and screenwriter Charles B. Griffith
Speaker 3: at his finest. And I don't know, it's hard to
Speaker 3: explain exactly why I love it so much, But I
Speaker 3: think also Charles B. Griffith, if he had wanted to,
Speaker 3: could have written an amazing shopping mall killbot movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh, but I guess we should comment on what exactly
Speaker 3: the inciting incident of the plot is. So we've got
Speaker 3: teens up to no good. They're getting into trouble in
Speaker 3: the furniture store, and then lightning strikes the mall.
Speaker 2: Literally, this is the same thing that happened last week.
Speaker 3: And yes, exactly the coast in the machine, the exact
Speaker 3: same plot device. There's a lightning storm, there's a power surge,
Speaker 3: and then machines go nuts and start killing people. And
Speaker 3: that's exactly what happens here. Lightning strikes the mall. We
Speaker 3: didn't plan it this way, did we. I think it
Speaker 3: just total lightning.
Speaker 2: It somehow struck twice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so lightning strikes the protectors start killing. They
Speaker 3: start with the mall security technician who is examining a
Speaker 3: Playboy magazine so intensely that he does not notice that
Speaker 3: the bots have started going biserve and you know they've
Speaker 3: gone into kill mode and so they stab him with
Speaker 3: their pincers. At some point around here, we also meet
Speaker 3: a nice couple who are having car trouble and they're
Speaker 3: going to end up at the party later. But they're
Speaker 3: not Mall employees. I guess that doesn't really matter. That's
Speaker 3: just yeah, But at this point, you've got basically all
Speaker 3: your pieces on the board. You've got a bunch of
Speaker 3: rowdy youths they're up to after hours misbehavior. You've got
Speaker 3: security robots gone berserk, and the plot is pretty simple
Speaker 3: after that, like you can imagine exactly what happens. It's
Speaker 3: your standard slasher trash in basic content, but as I said,
Speaker 3: this really does transcend most other slasher trash of its
Speaker 3: kind just by having a superior sense of humor and
Speaker 3: self awareness. And I think I described it already as
Speaker 3: sour cream and onion flavored. It might even be salt
Speaker 3: and vinegar. I don't know.
Speaker 2: But to your point, like, basically what's going to happen
Speaker 2: is you're gonna have kill after kill, with the kill
Speaker 2: circle ever closing around our main characters, and then they're
Speaker 2: gonna have to back right.
Speaker 3: U though the main characters are kind of resourceful in
Speaker 3: this movie compared to the I mean, in a lot
Speaker 3: of slasher movies, the kids are just kind of bumbling
Speaker 3: around and then they're like, oh what, oh, it's Jason Lack.
Speaker 3: But in this movie, they're they're proactive. They set traps,
Speaker 3: they try to do clever things to defeat the robots,
Speaker 3: and they sometimes succeed.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, for instance, that one of the first
Speaker 2: things they do is they go to the gun store
Speaker 2: in the mall and.
Speaker 3: They just called it's called Pecan Pause and it's a
Speaker 3: wall to wall firearms.
Speaker 2: That's well, that's that's that's actually kind of clever pecking pods.
Speaker 2: But but yeah, they they just they really arm themselves
Speaker 2: and and set out like, yeah, we're gonna wage war
Speaker 2: against these uh, against these robots.
Speaker 3: One detail I like is that after the furniture boys
Speaker 3: collect their guns, you can see they've also put some
Speaker 3: kind of putty into their outer ear canals. And I
Speaker 3: don't know if that's actually advisable in this scenario, because
Speaker 3: it might make it easier for a killbot to sort
Speaker 3: of roll up on you from behind. But it's interesting.
Speaker 3: This is one of the only movies I've ever seen
Speaker 3: where characters are preparing to use firearms and they decide
Speaker 3: to go for ear protection.
Speaker 2: It's interesting. It's pretty much the only example of responsible
Speaker 2: firearm use. Only well, I take that back, it's the
Speaker 2: only thing responsible even remotely related to a firearm that
Speaker 2: happens in this movie. But it is notable.
Speaker 3: I don't know why that details in there, but I
Speaker 3: really appreciated it. But yeah, what are some other highlights
Speaker 3: once the carnage starts. Well, obviously there is the Dick
Speaker 3: Miller scene. So we mentioned earlier this actor who's been
Speaker 3: in Corman movie since the sixties. Dick Miller plays a
Speaker 3: janitor in this movie. He's just got one scene, but
Speaker 3: he's pretty great. He's an ornery, disgruntled janitor who's cleaning
Speaker 3: up I don't know what it is. It's like vomit
Speaker 3: or something, and the robot rolls up on him and
Speaker 3: he gets he gets fresh with the robot and the
Speaker 3: robot electrocutes him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the robot kind of picked a fight
Speaker 2: with him. It like knocks over a bucket. It's a
Speaker 2: weird scene. Yeah. So yeah, that's one of the early kills.
Speaker 2: Just to get things rolling and of course, throughout this,
Speaker 2: we're still in the mall, and one of my favorite
Speaker 2: things is just trying to read the names of stores
Speaker 2: in the background, one of which is House of Almonds.
Speaker 2: Like the first time you see you're not sure. You're like,
Speaker 2: is that House of Almonds? And then you see it
Speaker 2: several times more and you're like, yes, there's there. Apparently
Speaker 2: was a store called House of Almonds. I tried to
Speaker 2: find some hard details about it. I couldn't, but I
Speaker 2: guess this was a real store. I guess they only
Speaker 2: sold almonds and almond derivative products and like almond based
Speaker 2: candies or something.
Speaker 3: That's kind of store where you get cyanide poisoning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 3: No, Wait, so they're used to That's just hard to imagine.
Speaker 3: That's too specific to be a real business model, you'd think.
Speaker 2: But I mean, like I say, I wasn't able to
Speaker 2: find any hard details about this. Perhaps listeners can write
Speaker 2: in about this, did you ever work at a House
Speaker 2: of Almonds? Did you own House of Almonds?
Speaker 3: But tell us about the fall of the House of Almonds.
Speaker 2: I did see some photos online of what looked like
Speaker 2: the interiors and in one case exterior of a store
Speaker 2: with the name House of Almonds, and it looks like
Speaker 2: it was like almond candies and stuff. So I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, it sounds nuts but.
Speaker 3: So unintentional or okay, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's it seems appropriate given given shopping mall. Again, this
Speaker 2: is where where shopping will cost you an arm and
Speaker 2: a leg. Remember right again, I'd say I mentioned earlier
Speaker 2: that the mall in this case, and I forget where
Speaker 2: they actually filmed. This is an actual mall obviously, but
Speaker 2: it's three stories of mall and it has some gorgeous
Speaker 2: and some walkways, so of course it has some some
Speaker 2: stunts where people fall and do these big, big, enormous
Speaker 2: falls through the center of the mall.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Eyad boy at one point gets knocked over the
Speaker 3: railing and goes splatt you know three floors below. That's
Speaker 3: pretty good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And I think I read that the director
Speaker 2: Jim he like test drove one of the stunts, like
Speaker 2: to prove that it was safe or something, and I
Speaker 2: think he ended up like breaking a rib in it.
Speaker 2: So oh, but the stunts look good, uh, and they
Speaker 2: make good use of the space, apparently they This is
Speaker 2: one of those films where yeh. They filmed it in
Speaker 2: the actual mall at night when nobody else was there.
Speaker 2: And yeah, they're firing off guns, they're setting portions of
Speaker 2: the floor on fire. They're using and lean a couple
Speaker 2: of cases at least they're using I guess phony storefronts
Speaker 2: turned into fake stores and then driving robots through them.
Speaker 2: It's it's pretty great.
Speaker 3: Well, I wish we'd figured out before we started recording.
Speaker 3: But we should look up after this which mall it
Speaker 3: was and figure out if it's the same mall as Commando,
Speaker 3: because if so, I definitely want to receive the Eagle
Speaker 3: Eye Prize for the week.
Speaker 2: Well, I can tell you now, Joe thinks of the
Speaker 2: power of the Internet. It was filmed at Sherman Oaks
Speaker 2: Galleria in Los Angeles, California.
Speaker 3: Wait a second, and it was used in multiple films.
Speaker 2: So night of the comment Commando.
Speaker 3: Command Yes, yes, yes, what do I win? What do
Speaker 3: I win? Tell them Barbara.
Speaker 2: Well, you get to learn that it was also where
Speaker 2: they spill filmed Innerspace parts of Innerspace Fast Times at
Speaker 2: Ridgemont High multiple films. So apparently it's just an easy
Speaker 2: place to film Back in the day.
Speaker 3: I had such a strong feeling. Man, I feel vindicated.
Speaker 3: I'm going to be this is going to be coursing
Speaker 3: through my veins rest of the day.
Speaker 2: Let's see what else do they do to make use
Speaker 2: of the space. There's use of the elevator. They make
Speaker 2: an elaborate robot trap using the elevator. They have kilbots
Speaker 2: using the escalators.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 2: Which is a great scene because you know from earlier,
Speaker 2: you know about the size of the robot's torso there's
Speaker 2: no way that that thing's fitting on an escalator. But
Speaker 2: through the magic of cinema, it manages.
Speaker 3: M hmm. There's one part after they blow up one
Speaker 3: of the robots in an elevator trap, which which is
Speaker 3: a great sequence, I thought. And they're they're laying low
Speaker 3: in a hideout. I think maybe they've gone back to
Speaker 3: I don't know, the pizza parlor or something, and they're
Speaker 3: sitting around drinking diet coke and it looks like one
Speaker 3: of them is drinking Tabasco sauce, just because there are
Speaker 3: drink cans and bottles on the table and then right
Speaker 3: among them is a bottle of Tabasco sauce. That was
Speaker 3: funny to me.
Speaker 2: Let's say so yeah, basically, they regroup, they put the
Speaker 2: fight to the robots, they set robot traps, and just
Speaker 2: when you're thinking that all of the shooting at robots
Speaker 2: is going absolutely nowhere, one of them does manage to
Speaker 2: disable the killer lasers on one of the killbots with
Speaker 2: their gun, So you have to give them credit for that.
Speaker 2: Did we mention that there's a great headed explosion in
Speaker 2: this one of the female victims of her head explodes
Speaker 2: when she's shot with the laser.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Terleski's girlfriend here. Her head explodes when she
Speaker 3: gets shot with a laser.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is It's good. It's not too grizzly. It's
Speaker 2: not like Scanner's level head burst. It's well.
Speaker 3: Also, at the in the end credits, when they're like
Speaker 3: showing all the actors goofing around and then showing the
Speaker 3: actor's name and the character they play, the clip they
Speaker 3: pick for everybody else is just kind of like, hey,
Speaker 3: what's up hanging out on set? But the clip they
Speaker 3: show for her is her head exploding. There is another
Speaker 3: thing that I really enjoyed, which is that toward the
Speaker 3: end we get down to our final girl of the movie,
Speaker 3: who is the nice girl from early on who worked
Speaker 3: at the pizza parlor, the one who was watching attack
Speaker 3: at the Crab Monsters with the nerdy boy. But it
Speaker 3: turns out she's a very good shot. She explains that
Speaker 3: her dad was a marine and she's in fact a
Speaker 3: real Annie Oakley with that revolver, and so she's been
Speaker 3: running around shooting at the robot. At one point, she
Speaker 3: gets chased into a pet store and just snakes and
Speaker 3: tarantulas are spilled all over her while she's trying to hide.
Speaker 3: It's a little implausible, but I like it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels kind of perfect. I was thinking about
Speaker 2: this earlier. When I think back on some of the
Speaker 2: kids who like to hang out in the mall, I
Speaker 2: feel like, yeah, these are the kids that would have
Speaker 2: wanted to own snakes and tarantula. So it makes sense,
Speaker 2: you know, hang out of the metal store, buy your
Speaker 2: metal t shirts, and then go over and buy a tarantula.
Speaker 3: Right. I just bought a twenty four dollars copy of
Speaker 3: The Fragile by nine inch Nails and Camelot Music, and
Speaker 3: now it's time to go get some food for my tarantula.
Speaker 2: Yes, so ultimately they're able to overcome the robots. They
Speaker 2: blow up the last of the robots. So there is
Speaker 2: a stinger at the end where a robot comes up
Speaker 2: and says have a nice day or something to that effect,
Speaker 2: which I guess keeps the dream alive. And for my part,
Speaker 2: I can't help but wonder what could have been. You know,
Speaker 2: if they'd made a sequel to this, there's so many
Speaker 2: directions they could have gone in. They could have gone
Speaker 2: in a Christmas direction. Wouldn't that have been perfect to
Speaker 2: have a holiday chopping mall picture where it's I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe it's the same mall, maybe it's a different mall,
Speaker 2: but you have the kill bots. Maybe you have a
Speaker 2: killer robot. Santa got a Santa hat? Yes, yeah, it
Speaker 2: put a sand hat on it. There's so much you
Speaker 2: could do.
Speaker 3: I totally agree.
Speaker 2: Crossover with Donna the Dead perhaps where you have zombies
Speaker 2: and kill bots.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but you can pit them against each other.
Speaker 3: That's smart. That's a good idea.
Speaker 2: But I mean, sadly it never came to be. This
Speaker 2: is the chopping mall we have, and it works well.
Speaker 2: It's a very enjoyable, brisk seventy seven minutes.
Speaker 3: You know, there is nothing about this film that's really
Speaker 3: all that deep or thoughtful, but I would still say,
Speaker 3: even at a very shallow level, it makes a pretty
Speaker 3: compelling case against autonomous lethal robots.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I sort of so highlighting some of the inherent
Speaker 3: dangers there. You don't really wants something that I don't
Speaker 3: know has lethal capabilities and could malfunction, and there's not
Speaker 3: like a human operator in the middle to take responsibility
Speaker 3: for what it does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, though there is early on. I mean, certainly that
Speaker 2: guy reading the Playboy and with the half eaten doughnut,
Speaker 2: you know, he is the what they I think they
Speaker 2: still referred to as the man in the loop on
Speaker 2: a semi apanomous system. You know, he's the one that's
Speaker 2: supposed to be keeping track, you know, checking in at
Speaker 2: least every thirty minutes to see if the bots have
Speaker 2: killed anybody. But then, of course all that gets thrown
Speaker 2: out the window when the bots get all juiced up
Speaker 2: on lightning and take him out.
Speaker 3: I mean, I can't honestly say my feelings about autonomous
Speaker 3: lethal robots have really changed due to this movie, but
Speaker 3: I'm vibing with it basically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I said, I feel like the strongest thing
Speaker 2: the things that resonate about this movie are mostly nostalgic,
Speaker 2: making one think about the mall and what the place
Speaker 2: that the mall had in the American experience of the time,
Speaker 2: certainly in the eighties and nineties, and I guess there's
Speaker 2: less of it today. But though there are malls still around,
Speaker 2: people still go to them, or at least they did
Speaker 2: so they yeah, I mean they still sometimes film movies
Speaker 2: and TV shows in them, so they exist, and they're
Speaker 2: really just begging for there to be another chopping mall
Speaker 2: movie filmed there. I think the sky is the limit.
Speaker 3: Okay, if the moist air of the real life galleria
Speaker 3: evaporates and forms a mist, that is vapor wave. But
Speaker 3: then that mist condenses on a window pane and rolls
Speaker 3: down and makes a puddle on the window sill, that
Speaker 3: newly liquidized water is chopping mall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's it's a good one. And let's see
Speaker 2: if you want to check this one out for yourself.
Speaker 2: This is one of those you can find pretty much
Speaker 2: anywhere you get your your digital media these days. I
Speaker 2: watched it on Amazon Prime. In fact, I watch it
Speaker 2: on Amazon Prime with a handful of listeners to the show.
Speaker 2: So if you were on that particular viewing. Thanks. Maybe
Speaker 2: we'll try and do one of those again in the future.
Speaker 2: Was pretty fun. But there's also a Blu ray of
Speaker 2: this one, I believe from Vestron Video, and I've not
Speaker 2: tried it out for myself, but it's really packed. It
Speaker 2: has like three different audio commentaries on it and a
Speaker 2: ton of extra features. So if you want to really
Speaker 2: go in deep on shopping mall, well that's what you
Speaker 2: got to put on your Christmas list.
Speaker 3: Oh that's interesting just looking it up. I would have
Speaker 3: assumed that Scream Factory would get their hands on this,
Speaker 3: but it looks like not.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, as long as we're talking about where to
Speaker 2: get movies and also things like shopping malls that you
Speaker 2: may not encounter as much anymore, we should we should
Speaker 2: take another moment to talk about video rental stores because
Speaker 2: on the show before we have mentioned we have plugged
Speaker 2: Atlanta's only video rental store, video Drome, and I would
Speaker 2: like to do so again because not only for any
Speaker 2: of our Atlanta listeners who want to actually rent a
Speaker 2: DVD or a Blu ray of a film and under
Speaker 2: certain circumstances, actually walk the halls, the hallowed halls of
Speaker 2: video Drum. I want to also point out that if
Speaker 2: you are not an Atlanta area human, you can still
Speaker 2: check out their merch store, which is at videodrome dot tv.
Speaker 2: Their main website is videodromeatl dot com, but videodrome dot
Speaker 2: tv is a place where you can get like a
Speaker 2: shirt with their logo on it, stuff like that, stickers, patches.
Speaker 2: It's pretty fun.
Speaker 3: Videodrome is like a store that would be in the
Speaker 3: background in Chopping Mall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I would think so, you know, and you
Speaker 2: do feel like you're kind of going back in time
Speaker 2: when you go to Videodrome. I hope to go there
Speaker 2: again soon, in part because some of the movies we
Speaker 2: discussed in Weird Howse Cinema like that's where we have
Speaker 2: to go to find them. Not everything can be obtained
Speaker 2: online and digital streaming form these days, and it's nice
Speaker 2: to have that physical experience of the store. All right,
Speaker 2: we're gonna go ahead and close out on Shopping Mall
Speaker 2: here today, but obviously we would love to hear from everybody.
Speaker 2: What did you think about shopping Mall? Did you watch
Speaker 2: Chopping Mall back in the day. Do you have memories
Speaker 2: of roaming the various malls during your younger years. We'd
Speaker 2: love to hear from everybody on that. Just a reminder
Speaker 2: that Weird House Cinema publishes every Friday in the Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind. Feed Core episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind continue to publish on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 2: Those are our core science and culture episodes, but Friday,
Speaker 2: Weirdhouse Cinema is our chance to unwind and get into
Speaker 2: a weird film instead Huge things.
Speaker 3: As always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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