All Guts, So Gory: A Horror Movie Podcast

Chopping Mall (1986) 80s Horror with All the Tropes | Mike's Picks

• Episode 56

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Grab your Casio keyboard, navigate through the crowded food court, keep you ID badges handy, and don't worry. Absolutely nothing can go wrong. The guys dive into one of the most 80's, in the best ways, horror films. With all the usual horror tropes. Chopping Mall. Directed by Jim Wynoski, and starring Kellie Maroney and Barbara Crampton.

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All Guts, So Gory is a weekly horror movie podcast hosted by Mike, Charlie, and Justin. Each week, one host picks a horror film of their choice—anything from cult classics and slashers to supernatural chillers and modern gore-fests—for the trio to dissect. With a mix of sharp insights, dark humor, and plenty of passion for the genre, All Guts, So Gory delivers lively discussions that celebrate the bloody, the bizarre, and everything in between. If you love horror movies, this is the podcast to sink your teeth into. 

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SPEAKER_00

Coming up next, an eighties horror film with your favorite campy horror tropes. Dumb teenagers, gratuitous nudity, robots, open mouth gum chewing. That guy.

SPEAKER_01

That guy and the mall cigarettes and vending machines.

SPEAKER_00

All guts so gory presents Chopping Mall.

SPEAKER_01

They broke into the mall for the wildest all-night party of their lives. But you're never alone. It's a chopping mall.

SPEAKER_02

The mad and macabre. I'm just gonna bash you over. Playtime is over.

SPEAKER_03

You don't know what death is. Nice and nice.

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to the All Guts Sogori podcast. Our conversation today is on the horror classic Chopping Mall. I'm joined by Justin and Charlie. Chopping Mall is great. This is a great hangout movie. I picked this one because we were doing some heavy stuff. I want to do something a little bit silly, a little bit campy. And it's one of those ones that just I didn't discover until the streaming era of television where you could just go in and find horror movies listed on places. It was maybe about seven or eight years ago I discovered this. But I always am a sucker for a movie with a with a playful title, like Chopping Mall instead of shopping mall, or It's a Wonderful Knife, things like that.

SPEAKER_02

Not a good movie.

SPEAKER_00

Zom Beavers, you know. Anything that's like uh, you know, Santa's sleigh, a sleigh is spelled S-L-A-Y. I'm always a sucker for like a like a clever title. But guys, I've seen this movie three times this week. Same, which is easy with a runtime of 76 minutes. Oh, as many times as I've seen this, I can't tell did they and I'll start with this question for you. Did they do a good job designing the killbots or the protectors, if you will? I want to say sure, but I feel like it's missing something, but I don't know what. Charlie, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02

As a child of the 80s, I know you guys are in our 90s. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Teen teen PBSN guys, as a child of the 80s, this movie was so beautiful. I mean, it it gave me girls with big hair.

SPEAKER_01

That's right.

SPEAKER_02

Guys that are like total douchebags and in rolled up jeans. We're at the mall, there's robots, there's like scientist guys who don't know what the fuck they're talking about. This movie is a gem for me, and maybe it's just because of the you know the time frame I lived in, but oh my god, this movie is 76 minutes. It could have been 12 hours. I'd have watched every single fucking every single minute.

SPEAKER_01

I think I think Mike would have at least waited, he would have made it through 79 minutes or so, right?

SPEAKER_02

Mike, I think 90 is his tops. Then you then you have a good you then you have to good have a good reason why it needs to go. You're going longer, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean I watched this three times this week because I watched it once once through to watch it. The second time I was doing my prep and I put it on, and then the third time I I put it on because I still had to prep the second half of the movie, but I just started at the beginning instead of going to the second half, and I just watched the beginning again.

SPEAKER_02

I I swear I watched I watched this movie like six months ago.

SPEAKER_00

I watched this three times all the way through.

SPEAKER_02

This was so when you when you said this was the movie you were gonna pick, I was like, oh my god, I can't believe it. And then I've watched it at least three times all the way through, because it's only 76 minutes. Like, who doesn't have an extra 76 minutes?

SPEAKER_00

There are episodes every day of the week Stranger Things and Game of Thrones that are the that are longer than this, right?

SPEAKER_01

All right, guys, this is the first time I saw this movie. Oh I watched it once this week, and it did leave a huge, huge impression on me, though. Going back to Mike's original question, though, did they design this robot well? Are you talking about for movie for entertainment value or for doing what it needs to do?

SPEAKER_00

I think a little of both. Like the fact that it's on tracks is practical because it can turn on a dime in those narrow ways.

SPEAKER_01

It could also go over things, right?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's also the size of like a trash can, like it's only as tall as like trash can height. So uh, I mean, I don't know. Like, it shouldn't have been bigger so it can be seen.

SPEAKER_02

I think there had to be like practicality of when we're talking about 1986. We're not talking about there's an AI, there's there's like computers are are big in the 80s because of just the technology we had at the time, and I mean the fact that it was on tracks was beautiful. The the arms that came out and the like the Cylon from Balsar Galactica head was very timely, and it was I will tell you that this robot was perfect for 1986.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, it was okay. So, so I don't know what you're gonna go into or not, but if you look at the robot that Nintendo came out with in 1985, kind of similar to this and Johnny 5 from Short Circuit. So both on tracks, right? Much different than the 60s, where it was like Robbie the robot and Forbidden Planet, those, you know, those walk-in guys or whatever.

SPEAKER_02

The guy in the costume.

SPEAKER_01

Right, the guy in the costume. So this, I mean, it looked like it was really cooking, like at certain times. It looked like it was going pretty quick. Sometimes it looks going stupidly slow, but then other times it is sometimes straight line acceleration, it's pretty good. I think you can just you can probably zigzag like an alligator and get away from this thing.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_01

Now you could.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could, it could not keep up with the human but no way.

SPEAKER_01

No, it I found this movie to be delightful.

SPEAKER_02

It was it was it was a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01

I have notes. I definitely have critiques and things that we can talk about later. But it and we got to see some people that we knew in there. It was this was yeah, like there's some border royalty in this. We did an episode on a couple of the different Friday the 13ths, right? We've got somebody from one of those, yeah, and like they all act pretty well, like they're pretty good in this movie. They're not good actors, but like they're all they all work.

SPEAKER_02

But this budget, they they did they the acting was great. I it never took me out. I was never like, oh, that's over the top, or that's like I mean, except for what's her name. You know I'm talking about Loops McGee, Susie Slater. Susie Slater. She is not a great actor. Are we talking about she served the purpose? Yes. She served the purpose of what she was there for. Yes, she did. But everyone else is like, great. I had no notes on acting. I mean, for what it is, for when it was, and for the budget they had, I'm fine with this movie.

SPEAKER_01

I will say that I would never eat at that pizza place if that dude came out of the back looking like that.

SPEAKER_02

I mean, I would see that shirt and I'd like to walk straight out. That's not like that's not Sabaros.

SPEAKER_00

What was with that restaurant? It was like a pizza place, but there's also like mixed vegetables and mashed potatoes and gravy on plates, and like an eating competition, apparently, for that pizza.

SPEAKER_02

And obviously, a option. Like, like more waitress more butter. Like, fuck you, dude. You're you're like 35, you're gonna die at 37.

SPEAKER_01

I think that guy would have died that day, right? Like you said.

SPEAKER_02

Oh my god. Robots would have had a field day with that guy.

SPEAKER_01

We well, I mean, we are like getting into it. So let's uh let's just move on.

SPEAKER_00

Let's move on.

SPEAKER_01

What other questions pre-moving, pre-getting into it, should we answer for you?

SPEAKER_00

All right, let's go. So so we're we we think the killbots were were good. We're we're chef's kids. Yes, why not? Mall mall cart mall culture. This is 1986. It's the peak of mall culture. This is after Fast Times at Ridgemont High. It's been out for four years by now. Mall culture is only growing and growing. I'm glad that I grew up in mall culture. I think kids these days are missing out. The social interaction at the mall. It was like learning how to have social skills, but in a safe place because you'd go to the mall with your friends and like you'd take a lap and you'd like see like the girls. Yeah, exactly. Taking they're doing the lap, but they're on the other side, and then like you pass by them again, you try to catch their attention, and then maybe you like stop so that they'll catch up to you, and then you walk behind them like, hey, where are you guys going? Like, you know, it it was like a safe girl. It was like a safe place to practice your social skills that wasn't school, you know.

SPEAKER_01

Let me holler for just a second. Let me holler for a second. Yeah, yeah. Let me holler at your girl. I didn't have a phone, but I had a notepad to take down some numbers. Can I buy can I buy you an orange?

SPEAKER_02

I'm telling.

SPEAKER_01

I'm telling. And then there was at Armall, there was an Aladdin's castle, which was like a arcade. Mall arcades were the best back in the day.

SPEAKER_00

Mine was called Dream Machine.

SPEAKER_01

I had that's actually my stage name. Dream Machine.

SPEAKER_02

That's a different pod. That's a different, totally different pod. So being a child of the 80s, when I may I may just be repeating myself, but mall culture was the shit. And I was in a small town, probably like 30 miles away from the nearest mall. So when as a as a teen, uh a junior high age kid, when I went to the mall, it was always with my parents, and then it wasn't until I was in my later teens in junior high or high school when I went to the mall with like friends, and we would like pre-game, and oh my god, it's just like a a core memory. Like, I'm gonna be in an old folks' home in 40 years, and I'm gonna be like, hey, where's that Spencer's at? And you know, like that kind of stuff. You know, it used to be the furniture king. Exactly. Like this movie hit on so many different levels. I just love it. Like a mall, so many levels. Right. Right. My mall is actually one. Sorry, guys. I'm fawning over this movie.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Maybe I'm always go ahead.

SPEAKER_01

I was gonna say, I always I always used to have to go by the when I was younger, I used to like to wear basketball jerseys. Okay. Who didn't? Right? So you always had to make a trip there. Had to make a trip by the champ shoes. Yeah. Had to go by the arcade. Yeah. You had to like pretend like you had more than two nails to rub together. Which I did not. Yeah. And then you'd look at the uh the CD store, which was$24 CDs, man. Like, holy shit, man. Sound goodie.

SPEAKER_00

And then you had to, you know, you have to listen to them. You go and listen to them, and the little headphones on the wall. Preview. Spencer's.

SPEAKER_01

You dare each other to go in the back part of Spencer's.

SPEAKER_00

My mall, my mall did not have a Spencer's. Like I said, my mall was one floor. It didn't have a Spencer's. I had to go to the good mall like four towns over to go to Spencer's and get to a second floor.

SPEAKER_01

But are you sure this wasn't just like Target that your mom would take you to? No.

SPEAKER_02

This is like one of those weird video stores with the beads that separated the videos from the streets.

SPEAKER_00

It was just more rural. Like, like so they built, they they they later added a Boskov's to my the mall in my town, and Boskov's was two floors, and it was the first escalator put into my town. And this is like 2001. So yeah. Yeah, but the rest of the mall had a movie theater that had like eight theaters in it, and it had a food court, and it had Caldor and Sears and Macy's. No, not Macy's, JC Penny as the cornerstone store.

SPEAKER_01

They had Heck. Yeah. The Heck store, probably. Not at this point.

SPEAKER_00

But like Foot Locker and Champ Sports and some of the other cornerstone stuff. But K Jewelers. Yeah, definitely. Orange Julius. Orange Julius, K Jewelers.

SPEAKER_01

Orange Julius feels like a newer thing, doesn't it? Or no? No, not red.

SPEAKER_00

No, no, it's old. It's old. My dad was Julius before I was when I was a kid.

SPEAKER_02

Chick-fil-A was like only M Malls for the longest time.

SPEAKER_01

And Panda Express.

SPEAKER_02

No, don't have that. That was post ML days. Yeah. Sabarrow.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I think we had like a Tony's pizza or something. Chick fil a no, no, we had some we had Sabaro. Cinnabon. Yeah, we had Sabaro. Subway. We had boardwalk fries. On the East Coast, boardwalk fries was a thing. Alright. Anyway. Let's let's talk about Chop Prayer. Morale this. So this is 1986. It's two years after the Terminator. It's one year before Robocop. All right. This is Jane Corman, who is the wife of Roger Corman, legendary B horror movie producer. Jane Corman was asked by Vestron Pictures, who made Shopping Mall, to bring a horror movie taking place in a mall to them as an idea. She asked this friend, Jim Winozki, to write it, and he agreed only if he could direct it. He'd only directed one film prior to this. He had had lunch with Roger Corman, and Jim Winowski said basically that in this one-hour lunch, he learned more from Roger Corman than he did in four years of film school. He basically got film school in one hour. Winowski and a friend Steven Mitchell banged out this script in one day, and Vestron loved it. And they were on board, and then now we're making the movie. Another story of just banging out a script in a day or a weekend, and like you're just fucking rolling it. You said banging. So since I brought him up, let's talk about our director, Jim Winowski, here. Can we have the Hall of Fame discussion now? I never heard of that. Settle down. Settle down. I mean, he directed Chopping Mall, written and directed by. And other fine films such as The Bear Wench Project, parts one through five. Never heard of it. The Brew Wives. Nope. House on Hooter Hill. Oh my god. Are we talking about adult films? The Da Vinci Coed. Oh, it's adult films. The Found Footage Classic Cleavage Field. This one's not a horror. The Devil Wears Nada. And my personal favorite, The Hills Have Thighs. Oh my god. Hall of Fame. Hall of Famer? He's on the short list. I don't know. Anyway. Yeah, so he's a big uh exploit exploitation director, and uh got a ton, a ton, a ton of credits to his name. Yeah, so we talked about Roger Corman, his role in this. There's a lot of Easter eggs throughout this movie based on the Cormans and some other stuff. We'll talk about the cast as we go through the film, but there's three characters in particular that show up in other films. And one of them is the Waspie couple in the beginning during the presentation, who owns Eating Raul. Yeah, they're in that Paul Paul and Mary Bland. And then Dick Miller, who I absolutely love, plays the janitor named Walter. Yeah. In a film called Gremlins Blood. And Gremlins and The Terminator. He's the uh Gremlins Terminator. Yeah. Love Dick Miller. Probably he's easily the best actor in this movie. I mean, I love Barbara Banton too, but Dick Miller is so good. Dick Miller is like acting really hard in this.

SPEAKER_02

And he only has such a small part of a small part.

SPEAKER_00

Come on, man. I know he's putting all of his all of his weight into it. And then the movie that Allison and Ferdy watch is a Corman film called Attack of the Crab Monsters. The Lost Empire movie poster in the restaurant is Winowski's first film. This one was his second. If you notice the pet store is called Roger's Little Shop of Pets, play on Little Shop of Horrors, which is Roger Corman film. So a lot of Easter eggs in this, a lot of inside jokes. This movie was made on an$800,000 budget. And the only number I could find for what it grossed? It was an$800,000 budget. The only number I could find for what it grossed, and it's listed on two different publications, is eight hundred and seven dollars. Not eight hundred and seven million, not eight hundred and seven thousand, eight hundred and seven. No way. At an average nineteen eighty-six ticket price of three dollars and seventy-one cents to go see a movie. That means that 217 people saw this movie in a theater. No way. It can't be true. I can't find another number.$807. I found it on two different publications. I can't find another number. It was released on November 14th, 1986, in New York City. Very limited release. I don't know that it got any more any more than that. Obviously not. Yeah. Snubbed at the Oscars, you know, as far as awards goes. Platoon and four movies no one ever talked about since 1986 or the Oscar nominations that year. The Metacritic score, 22. Way down there in the red. Ooh, ooh. Rotten Tomatoes, Tomato Meter, 58%. Fan score 40%. Really odd that the fan score on this is lower than the critic score. Really, really odd. I don't get it. This is like a fan service movie. It's not a critically acclaimed movie. This is fan service. I don't know. Maybe people were expecting something else. Which is possible. We could talk about it. It's called Chopping Ball. There's no real chopping going on. I don't know. That's yeah, maybe one of the things that the uh robots could have had is like some sharp object that they cut off some limbs or sever a head with at some point. Maybe they just had their pinchers, man. They just had those pinchers, you know. That's what they cut dudes' throat with. I know. Yeah. Let's get to that. So yeah, let's jump into the movie. Why not? The tagline here is called is where shopping costs you an arm and a leg. I think that's perfect.

SPEAKER_02

That's pretty good. Pretty damn good. It's not short, it's not long.

SPEAKER_00

It's right in the sweet spot. It's right in the slot. Yeah, so let's jump into this movie, all right? The opening scene, there's a jewel thief, as malls always tend to have. Right. A robot comes after him asking him to stop right there. It's one of our kill bots, it's one of the protectors. He tases the bad guy. The end. Alright, guys, final thoughts on chopping mall before we uh get out of here? No notes. No notes. No, so the the the end. Was this was part of a presentation of a film they were showing, I guess, to a group of stakeholders. They unveil the three robots that they're going to employ at this mall, the Protector 101 series of robots. Which nothing can go wrong. Yeah, absolutely nothing. And Charlie, before Charlie, there were three of them on stage before we came on this pod. What did you say about the middle one?

SPEAKER_02

What did I say about the middle one?

SPEAKER_00

The middle one has an unpleasant pleasant ethnic quality. Oh, I don't know what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01

That was the cabin in it, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_00

Yes, that was Paul and Mary Land. Yeah, they they had, I don't know. I don't know what they were doing. They all three look the same, and he goes, Huh, the one in the middle has an unpleasant ethnic quality. And then they cut to him again, and he's like, Maybe get one for the restaurant. We can get rid of people we don't want. Yeah. And then the third line he says is it reminds me of your mother, the laser eyes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're so waspy, so awful people.

SPEAKER_01

And of course, of course, they talk about, you know, this is where they're like, hey, what could what if this or what if that, really?

SPEAKER_00

Like yeah, they're asking questions, you know, what's what could go wrong? They're sleep darts, they're not gonna kill anybody, but in the presentation, that guy looked pretty dead. He looked pretty dead to me. So one of them comes online, they the he the guy giving the presentation has him, the person in the control room, fire one of them up, ask him for his ID badge for all the workers that are gonna be working after hour to show their badge. They're like, Thank you, have a nice day, right? You know, very very cordial, and then absolutely nothing can go wrong. And then, do we possibly get the most 80s opening credits ever? It's pretty bad. Yeah, it's pretty 80s. Yeah, what is that score? Is that score done on like a Casio keyboard or something? Probably we get a random kid that goes into an elevator with an ice cream cone, and then like 40 people cram in there really fast, and then when they come out, the kid's just covered in ice cream.

SPEAKER_01

Like, what are we doing? A parade of beauty pageant, ladies.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, right, and the guy's like Yeah, the guy trips going up the escalator. You're standing still, the escalator is doing the work, and he falls down. It's like, wait for me, holding a stack of boxes, and he's just like falls down on the escalator.

SPEAKER_01

We have the lady taking the craziest path with the precariously filled tray of hot dogs and sodas. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02

Oh my god. Like I got like 12 sodas for three people.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I have so many thoughts. What all right, she can't get a seat in the food court. What what was what was the point of this? And then when she gets to the table, it's like the table's missing, it just has like the little frame that where the bolts go. Right. And and she doesn't necessarily set the tray on the little frame part where the table should be, but she also doesn't necessarily like throw it in the guy's lap. It's like something in between those two. Yeah, it pills all over the place. I'm like, 12 drinks for five people. Four people. Like, what is going on? What is she supposed to be accomplishing?

SPEAKER_01

Seven hot dogs stacked on each other.

SPEAKER_00

We also then have the kid and the adult that totally looks like a pedophile fighting over the arcade game.

SPEAKER_01

Was that yeah, was that his dad? Like, did they have to leave?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And then he wanted to play. Well, he starts playing.

SPEAKER_00

He's like pushing the like grabbing the kid's arm to get him off the game, but then the dad starts playing. And then the kid's grabbing his arm, like, no, I'm playing. The second he left that other race. Oh, some other dude like spikes in. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what was going on here. It's part of what makes it such a fun watch. And then we have the kid that falls, the guy that falls on the escalator, distracted by the bikini models. Let's meet our first two girls here. We have Allison, they work Allison and Susie. They work at a restaurant here in the mall. Not in the food court. This is a restaurant. You know, there's a line in Mall Rats about that. You know. But Allison is played by Kelly Moroney, who gets top build here. Kelly Moroni has been in a lot of horror stuff. And then we have Night of the Comet. Night of the Comet. And then her friend Susie, who is Royal Horror Royalty, played by Barbara Crampton, most notably a re-animator fiend. And from beyond. From beyond. From beyond. Yeah. After we meet them, you know, they have they share a little scene in the restaurant they're working at. She wants to play matchmaker with Susie wants to set up Allison at this party. They're gonna have at the mall after hours. But let's cut to our to our first kill. So our mall has a command center for these new protectors or killbots, whatever you'd like to call them. Right.

SPEAKER_01

Which I guess are going online that day, the same day as the presentation or the day after. It kind of comes out.

SPEAKER_00

Something like that. Yeah, very, very, very soon. And they uh, you know, a lightning strike, it fries something in this command center, and one of the killbots comes online. The operator, one of the operators of the command center, he's the only one in there. He's holding up a center fold to a nudie mag, and then um this killbot just uh uses his little pinchers and busts through the nudie bag and uh chops his throat right through the chops his throat. Uh leaves little puncture wounds in his neck. We see the blood coming out of his mouth. That's our first kill. He dead. He dead, because all that lightning, you know. Yep. So let's meet some of our guys now. There's a before we meet the guys, you can hear over the loudspeaker as uh Ferdy's walking through the furniture store. Someone says there's a lost child in lingerie. That's just hilarious. That was me. Yeah. I was always getting lost as a kid.

SPEAKER_01

Did anybody try on purpose to scare their parents by standing inside the clothing racks?

SPEAKER_00

Pretty effective. No, I mean I literally always got lost as a kid. I was always trying to find something better to do.

SPEAKER_01

I would just go ahead and explain your your abandonment issues right now. You're like, oh, I'm not gonna be able to do an issue. I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So Furdy, he's played by Tony Odell, that is Jimmy, in the Karate Kid movies. And Cobra Kai, he comes back for that. He's our nerd, assistant manager. He's supposed to be nerdy Furdy, if you will. Hey, don't make me pull rank store. Don't make me pull rank. Yeah. He's supposed to be watching the store. Guys he works with, they want to have an after hours party with the girls in the store. Greg played by Nick Siegel. He's organizing the whole thing. These guys are like 35, right? They just look like it. Oh, there you go. Yeah. And Greg's buddy Mike, played by John Turleski. He turns out to be more of a director than an actor in his future. A lot of TV shows you've heard of, he's taking a turn directing some episodes, like some really big TV shows. Network shows, not like Game of Thrones and stuff like that, but like network TV stuff. Here is Chewing Gum. Great gum chewer. Chewing gum like a total douchebag. Open mouth chewing gum. Great 80s hair like a douchebag. Just a just a good, just a good 80s foil, you know. He's a you know, just I just like his character. Being just a total shit heel. In the best way, you know. He doesn't mean he's not like a mean guy, but he's definitely like the heel of the group. So they're gonna have they're gonna throw this party uh in the Furniture King store after the mall closes. Next we meet Rick and Linda. Rick's played by Russell Todd. He was also Scott from Friday the 13th, part two. He was the first kill, I think, in part two. Scott was the guy that was flirting with Terry with the slingshot, hitting Terry in the ass with the slingshot.

SPEAKER_01

He was upside down guy, yeah. He was the upside down guy.

SPEAKER_00

Yep. And then uh his girl, Linda, is played by Carrie Emerson. Didn't do much after this either. And then we meet Leslie, who Mike goes to find and who works elsewhere in the mall to let her know about the party going on. She's played by Susie Slater. And boy, was she ever. Yep.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So that's our that's our crew. Our crew is four guys, four girls, three of them are established couples, and Greg and Susie are trying to hook Ferdy and Allison up together. They're not a couple yet, but they're trying to play matchmaker a little bit at this party. Not too long. It's only a 76-minute movie, so they're not playing matchmaker too long. Basically, like, come to this party, it'll be fun, you'll like this guy. Whatever.

SPEAKER_01

Can I just say I left this movie never wanting to buy furniture from a department store ever again? Well, why is that, Justin? Because there's probably Jiz all over these couches and chairs and shit, man. They put down fresh sheets. Oh, I'm sure they did. The clean sheets. Yeah. Yeah, no. Broken springs, probably, too, man.

SPEAKER_00

Um yeah, maybe that's why maybe that's that lump in my couch. I don't know. Oh. So yeah, let's get to our next kill. Security guy number two. Oh, you control room operator number two. No, no, not yet. Not the janitor. No, no, no. This is another one of your guys.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, wait, who's this? This is Child's Play 2, the dad.

SPEAKER_00

Garrett Brown. He was in a lot of stuff. You're right. You're right. I did not make that note.

SPEAKER_02

He's a 70 or second city alumni. He was in used cars. He was in, I can't remember the movie with the gorilla. I mean, he was in a he played he played bit parts in a lot of movies.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

In the 70s. Good pull. Forgot that.

SPEAKER_00

Yep. Yeah. So he is a security guy number two or control room guy number two. Comes in to relieve the other one. Did the robots remove the first guy's body? Because it's not there. I'm not sure that they're programmed to do that.

SPEAKER_01

Right. But yeah. Programmed to detain to detain criminals, right? Well, not this one. Like they got rid of it.

SPEAKER_00

They don't have handcuffs. They just like in the video in the presentation, they just hit them with a sleep dart, and then they're there until the cops show up. Like still asleep. Yeah. But so this guy comes in and doesn't find the other guy, but he sits down the chair anyway. This killbot has like a small spear gun type thing that shoots through his neck on a rope and then it reels him in. Yeah, he's got a lot of shit, man. So he's got too. You got a multiple door in your neck.

SPEAKER_01

That's what I started with.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah. So now our first killbot is online and starts to go out into the mall, which just closed. Okay. The other one, killbots two and three, or protectors two and three, are also online and they go to their respective levels because they can only one on one level, two on the second level, three on the third level of the mall. So that gets us to the party in the furniture store, which quickly goes from a dance party to having sex like 15 feet apart from each other. Three of our couples in various beds, way too close to each other for my comfort, but you know, what are you gonna do? Let's talk about Mike and Leslie. I don't know. Too many lights on. You're right. Turn those lights off, man. Very bright. Let's talk about Mike and Leslie for a minute. The fighting couple? Mike's about to go down on Leslie, and she's like, you know, I don't allow that. I'm sorry, what? Yeah.

unknown

What now?

SPEAKER_00

She doesn't allow it, okay? We need some ladies to drop some stuff in the fan mail and be like, what? Like, who doesn't allow this? Written by a guy. Yeah, I guess so. I I have some thoughts, uh, some theories on why Leslie doesn't allow this.

SPEAKER_01

Ooh, is it is it like once one week out of the month? Is that what you're saying? Is that your theory?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, it's not that one. Mike, Mike does not stop chewing his gum the whole fucking movie. And he's chews his gum like a cow chewing cud, right? He she doesn't allow it because he's probably chewing on her down there. He probably gives a very toothy, a very toothy conolingus. And then she's like, nope, don't like that. Omega. So maybe that's why she's like, I don't allow that. Because he's like, what do you mean? I don't know.

SPEAKER_01

Take the gum out. He's forgive me. I'm just gonna go ahead and say he's probably left the gum in there a couple times, you know, 30 times. He does. It's right. I'm sure he only once.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Comes up for air, he doesn't have his gum anymore. He's like, I left it somewhere. Right. Anyway. Okay, that's guys. For the record, that was Charlie saying all that.

SPEAKER_00

He was. And then, you know, Barbara Crampton. She shows us her her Cramptons right after Greg tells her that she smells like pepperoni. And then, but that should be a compliment, I guess. Because he loves it.

SPEAKER_02

Pause, pause real quick. So I did somebody who worked at a McDonald's. No, a Bird King. Okay. She totally was all over her.

SPEAKER_01

You can't get away from it.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. No.

SPEAKER_01

Like I worked at the movie theater, and like just that popcorn and that butter smell, like just caked into you all day, and you basically have to like undress outside, get hose down before you can come in.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I worked in it. I was a line cook for a time, and I just smelled like grease every night. I had shirts that I wear just for work because they you can't even wash the smell out of it.

SPEAKER_01

So Barbara Crampton hears she hears pepperoni, and word association was like pepperoni nipples. Let's show these nipples. That's what she did. That's it. That's what it was. More butter. Susie Lynn.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And then Allison and Ferdy, they're they're watching TV instead, you know. So out of these four couples, take a wild guess who's gonna make it to the end of the film. Right. Yeah. If you know the rules. If you know the rules, it's the 80s.

SPEAKER_01

So they were not watching a scary movie. They're watching a 1960s like giant crab movie. That's not scary.

SPEAKER_00

Attack of the crab monster. Was that what it was? Yeah. They do kiss though. They kiss. They don't have sex, but they have kiss. And then I don't I don't know which one, but one of the girls moans that you're the king, you're the king. Right. Don't know which one that was.

SPEAKER_02

You only hear it in the background, but you don't know who it is.

SPEAKER_00

It was it had to be Leslie. Right. No, it wasn't Leslie. It sounded like maybe oh, maybe it was Barbara Cranton. Because isn't Greg the furniture king? I don't know. It's not Ferdy and it's not Mike. I don't think it's Rick. Rick's not the furniture king. Yeah, it might have been Susie. Okay. Um, yeah, so they're doing all this stuff, and then we need uh Walt the Janitor, Dick Miller's character. Best actor in the film. Cleaning up vomit. What is he mopping up? I was gonna say, what is he mopping up with? Like the mop bucket looks like gray paint. It's not a little bit more than a bit.

SPEAKER_01

It was like he was mopping up taste. It was like strawberry milkshake vomit was what he was like mopping up, and he was just using more vomit to mop it up.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I love how the so the his co-workers are talking shit to him, and he's like, You gotta find the little bastards that did this. They're dead meat, dead meat, and then you know, one of the protectors rolls up on him, sneaks up behind, and knocks his mop bucket over all over his feet. He turns around, he's like, Hey, you clumsy bastard. Or no, he's like, You clumsy son of a bitch. Right. I gotta turn you into scrap metal. Begging for it. Be just talking shit. Did they not inform the night staff to show these things their ID badge? He's wearing it. And well, he's wearing it, and then they it does ask him to show it. He's like, my ID badge, and he like barely shows it, and he's still talking shit, and then he gets you know, he's like picks up the mop in like a threatening manner, like he's gonna whack the uh the robot with it, and then it shoots the little shoots the little taser out by his feet. He's like, What the hell was that? And then when he turned when it turns the taser on, it electrocutes him. Right. Because you know because that's how that works.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. He he was wearing rubber sold, but I think he'd been fine. He would have been fine. But yeah, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So poor Dick Miller, short scene, love Dick Miller, wish he was in this a little bit more. But but yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Did you like the cartoon Lightning Taser? Like all around is the best.

SPEAKER_00

Always. Like I I got shocked one time on like an electric fence. Not not in a bad way. It was like, I don't know, a hundred volts or something. Like, like enough you could feel it, but not like like it was enough that like you would dare your friends to like touch it, and you would just sound like a Charlie story, not a Mike story. But I was I was shocked that like I didn't see like lightning come up uh through all the way up through me, you know. I'm like, I thought that's how that worked. Anyway, let's go back to Mike. He goes out for cigarettes, and he better hurry back to Leslie. Leslie Leslie only smokes? No. Virgin lights.

SPEAKER_01

Or Dick Miller passed away in 2019 at the age of 90. He did. Yes, he did. Wow. 90. Hey, good life for somebody who survived Gremlins and Shopping Mall and the Terminator. He didn't survive any of them, actually. No, he didn't survive Terminator. All of them.

SPEAKER_00

No, yeah. Yep. All right, yeah. So Mike better hurry back with those cigarettes. You better hurry back because boobs, you know? Hurry back. Boobs.

SPEAKER_01

Definitely did I was telling Charlie before we started recording this that her IMDB literally starts off with a description of her boobs, basically. Susie Slater. Susie Slater, it says buxom shapely, and attractive blonde bombshell. Susie Slater was born, blah, blah, blah. So I'm like, damn. It says born June 13th, comma 19. Question mark, question mark. So like we don't even know. Wow. No. Oh yeah, buxom, shapely, and attractive blonde bombshell.

SPEAKER_00

Jesus. What does Sidney Sweeney's bio start with?

SPEAKER_01

Probably something way more poetic than that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Way more PC than that. Anywho, so Mike doesn't hurry back, though. He gets got. Leslie, he he goes to buy the cigarettes, and the little bot comes up to him and asks for his ID badge, which he's carrying around. I don't know why they all figure they have to carry him around. I guess they know about these robots that are roaming around.

SPEAKER_01

They're properly prepped.

SPEAKER_00

And they're properly prepped, so he gets his ID badge, shows it, but it doesn't seem to work, and starts to corner him, and then it chops his throat.

SPEAKER_01

First, he does yeah, the sleep darts him into submission and then goes over and takes him out with the chop of the throat, right? Yep.

SPEAKER_00

Now Leslie goes to find Mike because she needs her cigarettes. So she's walking through the mall in her underwear, as one does. As one does. And then finds Mike. He's his throat slit. She freaks out. Here comes the killbot around the corner. She takes off running. And now we see the killbots using their lasers. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01

Not very accurately.

SPEAKER_00

No. Well, the one time it is. So and I gotta and I have questions too. So it lasers hit her twice in the back, and it like chars the little sweater she's wearing, chars her shirt a little bit.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But if this hits you in the head, it blows her head to snitherens. The rest of the crew sees this through the window of the furniture store, and pieces of her head and blood get splattered all over the window. Now, question for you, Justin. On your first watch here, all of the kills have been very light on the gore. Like, you know, they like they got him in the throat, but it's like a little tiny bit of blood. That's a little puncture. It's not much. Dick Miller, the the electrocution, you know, there's it's animated lightning. It's cartoonish, right? Did you s did you expect it? Did you expect a head to explode?

SPEAKER_01

And this, no. No, I was completely not expecting a full-on head explosion from this. Especially because, like you mentioned, we saw little like like almost like Roman candles, like where it was like hitting the sweater and it was burning and then, ah, you know, but like nothing like this.

SPEAKER_00

The one that catches her face just blows her head completely off.

SPEAKER_02

Like it was grotesque, and it was really good. It's a practical effect that like her head just is gone. It's just like blows up, and there's like a scraggly neck left behind.

SPEAKER_01

It is great. I'm trying to think, but like of the eight people, I mean we'll do a kill count later and we'll talk about that, but that's the only one that only exploding parts, right? Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So, I mean the you know what the best part of this is during the end credits, they do my favorite end credits thing where they show the people in the movie, yeah, um, and give their their name. I hate that. I hate that. And for Susie Slater, her end credit picture is her head exploding and the freeze frame. It's the freeze frame of just the the head's already exploded, so it's just the guts freeze frame, and then Susie Slater pops up at the bottom. It's the best, it's the best version of that. They might she must have pissed somebody off. I don't know. Oh, it's so good though. Let's see here. So somehow Protector number two has come down a level, and now both these things are entering the store, going after the other three couples that are left over, like they were never, like they never would. They don't enter the stores according to the rules that the guy saw. They don't like patrol the uh parts of the mall, they don't go in the stores.

SPEAKER_01

I think when when it ignored the two ID badges, we're to assume that like they're not paying, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

They're playing by their own rules at this point, right? Right, exactly. Agree. And then now they're also the worst shooting laser uh shooting lasers ever, as there's like 75 lasers go off, but they miss everyone that's like 10 feet in front of them. Like storm trooper. If they just had a you know exploding headshot, now they can't hit anything. Right. Um, I guess also these lasers that can do that much damage can't even penetrate a wooden door either. The crew makes it to like the stock room at the back of the store. They they hide in there, they close it, they barricade it.

SPEAKER_01

These things apparently have bobs. Pause real quick. They barricade it with cardboard boxes.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I assume that they I would hope that they're full, like they're weighted, like they have stuff out there.

SPEAKER_01

They were tossing them around like nothing. Yeah. Then they we find out they have C4 goo that they can use on the on the door hinges.

SPEAKER_00

Who knew, right?

SPEAKER_01

Who knew?

SPEAKER_00

You texted us that when you were watching this. You were like, robots have C4?

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Of course they do.

SPEAKER_01

It just gooed it on there. I'm like, oh, that seems like a pretty intense security measure to have. Yeah. It hinted at the laser that they the one used later to cut a robot-shaped hole out of that door, but uh but it didn't tell us about the C4.

SPEAKER_00

Right. So they're hiding in there, and then you know, they realize that the steel doors that lock the mall up lock, so now it's midnight, and now they don't open till 6 a.m. So they are stuck in this mall for six hours. Like the craziest looking ever. They made it sound like it's like the worst possible scenario, and I'm like, it's six hours. I don't know if that bad. I don't know if we want to step on could you escape this, but it's probably the mall's fucking huge, and later we find out that you can later we find out that you can hide under a shelf and it's not gonna see you. I'm pretty sure you can make it six hours in this mall.

SPEAKER_01

It's like dogs, they can't look up.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, they can, they can. I know I know you can look down for sure. So the girl they send the girls up through an air duct to escape. The guys they go out and look for weapons at the sporting goods store. And uh turns out just like every good sporting goods store in the mall, there's just racks of shotguns and M16s and and rifles, just on a rack, not even behind the counter, just out of the floor. Boxes of ammo and all that.

SPEAKER_02

That's a real thing.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it was 1986.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, but they yeah. You know, we'll pull uh pull off over that. Pull out they're hunting boar or something with those machine guns.

SPEAKER_00

Something like that. And then Rick's uh Rick gives us a great line. Let's send those fuckers a Rambogram.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And the guns don't do shit.

SPEAKER_02

Nothing. Might as well have been throwing spaghetti at them.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, okay, they do knock one of them over. Was that with the uh propane tank? Yeah, the propane tank gimmick. They they rolled it under there like like in Terminator. They they threw like a little bomb under the tracks and it blows up the one of the machines. So same deal here. They roll a propane tank over to it and blow it up with a with a blast and a gun blast, and then you know it tips it over. But then we find out these things can stand back up. Robot blood. That was scary.

SPEAKER_01

What's that? Robot blood.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, the girls they drop into another store out of the air duct and they start to make Molotov cocktails, if you will, with some small gas cans. That's too good. Solid idea.

SPEAKER_01

Not a good idea, actually. No, because like no, because they don't explode. Molotov, like, is glass. Like you throw it, it explodes, and the fire spreads, right? This was like, these were like heavy tin things that they were gonna slide. It worked, it worked. I'll put it that way.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, we find out at the end that blowing them up works, but and I think that's what they were trying to do. But instead, Susie blew herself up. Well, stupid Susie, though.

SPEAKER_01

Like, she was the one who's like, I gotta get out of here. They need me. Yeah, they guys need you to what? Burn yourself on front of the edge.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, Susie gets knocked over, no real effort to get out of the way. No, they had more business days to say first. They did Barbara Cramp did dirty here. Yeah, they did. They did her bad. No real effort to get out of the way. She's just kind of laying there on the floor, like, yeah. Like Michael McDonald and Austin Powers with the steamroller, like that kind of distance. She's just like, ah help.

SPEAKER_01

And they like keep they pan back and forth between what's yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. Killed by her own cocktail. You never get killed by your own supply. Yeah, don't do that. Isn't that a line from like Lord of War, that Nicholas Cage movie where he he's a gun runner? He's like, rule number one, don't get shot with your own guns or something like that.

SPEAKER_02

No, it's a good that's a good rule, though. No, I just remember Scarface, don't get hired on your own supply. Was that Scarface?

SPEAKER_01

He did not follow that rule, I'll tell you that much.

SPEAKER_00

So they're able to destroy killbot number two, protector number two, in an elevator. Um, by getting it to go in the elevator, and they put the two propane tanks on top. And Ferdy, who's seen Dirty Harry 24 times, so he knows how to shoot a 44 Magnum, of course, misses about 12 times, and then Allison yanks the gun out of his hand, and on the first shot hits the propane tank, blows it up. The elevator drops all the way from story number two to story number one and explodes.

SPEAKER_02

Right. Very very reminiscent of uh Night of the Comet, where she and her sister are very gun savvy.

SPEAKER_00

Her dad's a marino. She says my dad's a marine, yeah. Good shot. Let's see. They try to get to the third floor. There's a scene we can skip over where they're reminiscing a little bit, but they get to the third floor because they realize the control room is on the third floor. One of the protectors pushes Greg over the rail and he falls to his grabs him by the wrist and throws him.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And I feel like they forgot. I feel like they forgot to look for the control room, because I don't think they ever get there. Even though that was their plan. That was their plan, and they never go there.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I think after one we we as what's his name, Ferdy. We assume he's dead. We're jumping around a little bit, but that's that's probably why she gave up on the control room plan, is what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Not a very gory death for Greg. He falls, he falls, you know, 30 feet splat, and then there's just like when they show him laying there, I don't even think they made it look like his bones were broken. There's just like a little red paint around his head. But he's just he's just like laying there. I'm like, damn, no splat, no, you know, no like arm bent the wrong way, none of that.

SPEAKER_01

That's when they uh they all uh heave open that metal gate, right? And roll under there into the department store on the third floor.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

They hold it in there, shut it, shut the gate, and then the set up the mannequins.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, they they go in the store and wait, and then they uh, you know, once the protector gets up there. Good plan, I think, to set up a bunch of mannequins as decoys. What do you think of that plan?

SPEAKER_01

Maybe spread them out a little further and like, you know, have it change its view, like have to turn a little bit. But the other plan, which they did not, they didn't talk about they were gonna do this, but they set up those mirrors behind the mannequins, which reflected the laser back at the protector.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_01

That's what got him all freaking shocking himself.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, but not before that protector hits Linda, who decided to just stand still in the open, and she took a laser to the gut.

SPEAKER_01

We had two things happen. Yeah, the the uh laser bounced back at the robot, and he starts spinning like a crazy protector, shooting everywhere. She's standing there like an idiot, not moving, not looking for cover.

SPEAKER_00

She standing there, shot in the gut.

SPEAKER_02

Obviously. The movie is 76 minutes long. They had to kill everybody as quickly as they could.

SPEAKER_01

And then did we think Linda? I thought Linda was going to be the one to save us because she knows how to like work on cars and she knew how to do all this stuff. Like they they made a point of showing that she can get the car started on the first try. We are fighting against machines. I'm like, what are we doing, guys? We didn't write it that she had an idea.

SPEAKER_00

Well, what happened was that she had sex earlier in the movie, so she had to go.

SPEAKER_01

That's not clarity, right? Gotcha. There's rules.

SPEAKER_03

There's rules.

SPEAKER_01

You don't know the rules. Yeah, but but for sure. Was that wait, no, that wasn't Linda. That was who's who's the uh the one that just got shot in the gut. That was that was Linda.

SPEAKER_00

Linda's in the red flannel shirt, yeah. That was Linda. Okay. And then Rick, her boyfriend, is sees that Linda died and gets all upset. So what does he do? He gets on uh this little motorized cart about 10 feet away and decides to ram the malfunctioning killbot from 10 feet away, gets like no speed up, no ramming speed, just like makes contact with it and electrocutes himself.

SPEAKER_01

Rookie move.

SPEAKER_00

Like, dude, as one does you're gonna run into that to destroy it, but you're like you get no, I don't know. It's so stupid.

SPEAKER_01

He was all adrenaline, he was all hopped up on emotion, okay?

SPEAKER_00

Meanwhile, you're holding that M16 and not using it. Well, it doesn't matter. That thing's useless. Yeah. So now we're down to just Allison and Ferdy. And Ferdy tries to shoot the killbot, the last one standing, because we have one killbot that exploded in the elevator. The second one is electrocuted and I think out of commission up on the third floor. They split up, of course. Yeah, and so they yeah. Ferdy, yeah, I think tries to shoot it and then thinks that throwing the gun at it was gonna help. And then um he throws the fire extinguisher at it, and then I think it throws the fire extinguisher back at him. Oh gosh. Right in the right in the chest, and he gets like knocked back on his ass. And we think he falls on his head, yeah. Yeah, we think he's dead.

SPEAKER_01

And this is where Allison He took out the laser, right? Didn't he shoot it point blank with the laser? Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00

Took out the laser, which we're gonna do. The laser on this one is now malfunctioning, yeah. Which helps, yeah. So Allison hides in the pet store, Roger's little house of pets. She goes under a shelf, she tries to cover herself a little bit with a bag of food of some kind. The killbot the killbot knocks over some tanks, conveniently holding tarantulas or a giant fucking snake. Yeah, and so now these spiders and snakes are crawling all over her.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, so bad.

SPEAKER_01

Charlie, killbot or snakes? Which one are you taking your chance?

SPEAKER_02

I would take a killbot every day of the week, twice on Sunday. Snakes, fuck that. I'm out.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Snakes, they get her, they wrap them around you, and you're done. Yeah, you don't know. Yeah. Snakes in a mall, that's what that should have been called. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, she's very calm throughout this. She makes it through. You know, the killbot doesn't suspect her, doesn't find her. She gets up to run out of the store, but a cat startles her and she screams. And now the killbot is back coming after her. So now Alice's plan her plan is to hang from the third floor rail by the bottom rung to avoid being seen. Doing pull-ups, chin ups, and the bottom. The killbot, they can't look down, I guess. But it's just sitting there, like kind of scanning, but doesn't see her. But for long enough where she can't hold on anymore. She falls all the way through a tent and she lands on like two suitcases, and that breaks that breaks her fall. She almost destroyed the Ralph Samson Standy. Yes, I saw that. I saw that, yeah. And then, yeah, those those two suitcases break her 30-foot fall to the brick floor. Ah, she's fine. She was limping like that. She was limping and she looked like she had scoliosis. That's where she was. Whoa, has she got the scoliosis? Some kind of osus.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Uh, let's see here. So now so now she gets to the paint store and she hatches this plan. She remembered the flare in her, but she has the road flare that she's been hiding in her cleavage for the last 45 minutes. Yep. As one does. As one does. Traps it in a paint store. She starts cracking open gallons of paint, dumping them on the floor, adding gallons of paint. She was throwing it in the phone. And the paint thinner with it. Yeah. She was flowing throw paint thinner is super flammable. And she was adding that in there. So the theory was that the that the tracks on the killbot would get hung up in the paint and spin its wheel so it couldn't get out. And then she threw the road flare in there with the paint thinner, which exploded and set it on fire, so it couldn't get out because it was spinning its tracks in the paint. So that was the plan, and it worked. You know, very uh little bit of Terminator imagery with the killbot sitting there and with the fire all around and not being able to really move, struggling a little bit, and then it just dies.

SPEAKER_01

Where did this take place? Like, do we know? Did they ever give us any? I do know.

SPEAKER_00

I got it in the it was a real mall. It's a real mall. But I mean, like Sherman Oaks Galleria in California.

SPEAKER_01

So California, okay.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So what I'm going back a little bit where she's calculating how much that they're gonna owe and damages, I'm like, nah, man, you guys are gonna be set for life. Like these robots.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Break in or not, you break into them all and a killer robot comes after you. Sue, baby Sue.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. So yeah, that's how she kills the last one. And because it's the 80s, you have to say something really cool before you kill someone, and she says, Hey, have a nice day, right before she throws the flare into the paint store. Because that's what they were saying.

SPEAKER_01

That's what they were saying after. I know.

SPEAKER_00

Have a nice day. Yeah. Yeah. Birdie, he shows up. He's still alive after all. Just got a roll of toilet paper. Yeah, roll of toilet paper. Holding the back of his head that he was bleeding out of. Bruh. Yeah. That's right. No paint on Allison at all. No, not a drop. I get out like a little itty bitty can and a little brush to fill in some nail holes or something. Inevitably, I get it all in your beards. Yeah. I'm like, I must, I should have put coveralls on because I'm gonna get it on my shoe. It's gonna get somewhere. She is like holding gallons of paint against her chest and popping them open as fast as they can and throwing it across the room. Not a drop on her. I got a theory that Freddy plays dead.

SPEAKER_01

Oh yeah. That's all I gotta wait for.

SPEAKER_02

I'm playing dead.

SPEAKER_01

Just gotta make it six hours now. You gotta make it six hours. Nice shot again. Yeah. Dude, what kind of fire hazard are those giant steel doors that like block everybody?

SPEAKER_00

All right, let's move on. Move on. The people. Okay, so this is the end of the movie. Ferdy and Allison Kiss and the end. The end. Tidy 76 minutes. So yeah, that was one of my nitpicks. Is like you still have workers in the mall, the janitors and whatnot. You can't just lock everything down. No. What if there's a fire? Like the line from the Breakfast Club. But what if there's a fire? What if there's a fire?

SPEAKER_01

Hey, I'm not calling them dead.

SPEAKER_00

What if your dope was on fire? Impossible. They're in Johnson's underpants. Whatever that wrote, whatever that line is. Yeah. Did the ending here stick the landing for you? Yeah, fine. Yeah. Great. Follow the trope. If you have sex, you die. So pretty much. The two people that made it at the end were the were the two virgins. It did. It did. It was fine. Sure. Good ending. It's a great watch. Great watch. A lot of fun. Did Atticus watch this with you, Justin or Apollo? No. Nobody Sarah?

SPEAKER_01

Like when I told Atticus this was one of our Zooms, he was out. He doesn't uh he doesn't normally partake. Yeah, I'll tell him that he'll like it. Yeah. You know, Zoom Zoom.

SPEAKER_00

Any favorite quotes? Like, let's send those fuckers a Rambogram. Waitress more butter. Waitress more butter. Not even a pause. Waitress more butter. More butter. Real quick cut.

SPEAKER_01

They're like, I need four belly busters and the Liguini buttons. Like, who's gonna eat all that? And they just point at the guy with like four other piles of food.

SPEAKER_00

More butter, man. Anything the waspy couple in the beginning says.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, they were they were they were being me. I'll I'll be saying too like that.

SPEAKER_00

Yep. Yeah. Yeah yeah. You clumsy son of a bitch. Yeah. Turn you into scrap metal. Love it. Couple of questions for you guys. All right. Is there deeper meaning here with a movie like Chopping Mall, like capitalism, law and order, consumerism, the Reagan 80s, or just nah? Maybe.

SPEAKER_01

I mean there's always like themes of like the the youth or that that middle generation between like you know teenagers and adults are running amok. They're like they're going crazy, all they care about is sex and all this stuff, and whatever, like with Friday the 13th and stuff. It's like people like to see them get their just desserts for being so carefree, right? So I think that's part of it.

SPEAKER_02

But yeah, I think a lot of it is like a fear of technology. Like, yeah, I listened to this one podcast, I can't remember what it's called, but it was talking about like bicycles were gonna be the end of society. And roads and cars are gonna be the end of society. It's just whatever the generation is, malls are gonna be the end of society. And for this this movie in particular, it's technology is gonna be the end of society, and we're gonna have robots running around, running amok, doing whatever they want, and we're not gonna be able to do anything, and blah blah blah. It's just like every 10 years, it's a new thing of this is gonna end society, and we're on AI is gonna end society as we know it, and probably not.

SPEAKER_01

We we know you welcome our AI overlords. I do. I always say please and thank you, man. So do I every time all the time. So in the 80s, we had like to Charlie's point here Blade Runner, Terminator, Robotop, Cyborg, Deadly Friend, a movie called Runaway. Did it has anybody seen Runaway? With Tom Sellick and Elisa. Oh yeah. I have. It's so good. It is great. Like they're little spider bots, and he's got this bullet that can, like, anyway, it's great. Yep. Follow you over right now. Yeah, this technology stuff was the scariest thing during the 80s, right? Robots were all the craze, but what if they're not fun and cute? Yep.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Where we are today with AI.

SPEAKER_00

Do you guys have any favorite mall movies? Doesn't have to be horror, you know, maybe Phantom of the Mall, Eric's Revenge. But uh, you know.

SPEAKER_01

Maul Rats pops out. Mall rats is the easy one. It's the easy one.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that's a nineties. That's a nineties. Not saying any malls.

SPEAKER_01

Dawn of the Dead. We've done the Dawn of the Dead. Dawn of the Dead, both of them.

SPEAKER_02

Weird Science, where was it? Anthony Michael Hall and whatever his psychic name is, they were at the mall and trying to pick up girls, and Robert Downey Jr. and whatever his psychic name is was like pouring purple slushes on him. Yeah. Yeah. Don't forget Paul Time. Yeah, it was the time of the mall. 80s, 90s. Paul Blart Mall cop?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Not me.

SPEAKER_00

Observer Report was funny though.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, Observer Report was kind of like dark, though. It has some like dark parts to it. I was like, dang, it's not as fun as like a Paul Blart.

SPEAKER_00

No. Is let's see. Is Bad Santa? Does that qualify as a mall movie? It does. It showed up on lists. Bad Santa's hilarious. Fast times, obviously. Fast times of Ridge My High. Plenty of mall stuff. Big mall scene there. But Maul Rats, I think, is the king.

SPEAKER_01

Mall rats and shopping mall. Yep. And and mannequin, the movie where the guy falls in love and has crazy. That was that was my movie in the 90s.

SPEAKER_02

My like, I love this idea of the love and the mannequin is totally unrealistic when you look back at it. But I mean, yeah, I love that movie.

SPEAKER_01

What? Is it it's not it's not realistic? Nah.

SPEAKER_00

Do you have a favorite below the line actor in this film? So not Kelly Moroney, not Barbara Crampton. Not Crampton. Someone below the line. For me, it's Dick Miller, but I want to know if you guys said something.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, it's gotta be. It's gotta be Dick Miller because my childhood was Terminator and Gremlins as well, right? Nope.

SPEAKER_02

So I'm gonna go with um what's her name? Susie Slater. Susie Slater.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. She doesn't fit below the line. Oh, she fits. Slater, you brought her. Slater. I hardly know her.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Which kill was best? There's only one answer.

SPEAKER_00

What is it? Yeah. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01

No, you guessed. I mean, I think we're all right.

SPEAKER_00

I think there's two candidates.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

It's Dick Miller. Dick Miller. When did we stop putting animated lightning around people to show they were being electrocuted? Have we stopped doing that yet?

SPEAKER_01

The world got sadder that day.

SPEAKER_00

Or obviously Leslie, the head exploding.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_00

The head exploding is that one that one came the most out of nowhere. Like I said, we need the tones. The few kills before it, it's like the cartoony electrocution. It's like the throat slashes are very minimal gore. They're not splattered, they're just little punctures, tiny little blood dribble. And then her head just boom.

SPEAKER_02

Like a couple times in the ass in the back. And then all of a sudden it's like boom, her head. Yeah, incredible.

SPEAKER_00

Could you escape this? Where'd our victims go wrong? We talked about this. Yes. Hide for six hours somewhere in a big fucking mall where a robot can't see under shelves. Piece of cake. Easy. Just be yeah, just be quiet.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Anywhere. A break room.

SPEAKER_02

Just get up in the in the at the air ducts and leave it.

SPEAKER_01

Too hot. They made it some somehow the robots controlled the air ducts and turned up the heat on them. I was like, what?

SPEAKER_02

Fuck it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, use your sweater. Drop down at the gun store. Guns don't do nothing. They didn't. They did not do. But they probably had grenades in that same store if they had giant machine guns and stuff.

SPEAKER_02

I mean they had a fucking M16.

SPEAKER_01

They probably had RPGs and shit. With ammo. Yeah. All right, what do we got? Let's see.

SPEAKER_00

We got uh who is the dumbest character? I don't know. Do we have an extra hour? There's so many. I I don't know. Here are the nominees. Let's hear it. Rick for the useless motorized cart stunt. That was pretty dumb, but he was pretty tough early on. Yeah. Ferdy for trying to throw the gun at the metal killbot. Hey, he lived. He did live.

SPEAKER_01

He automatically is not the dumbest.

SPEAKER_00

My nominee, my my say, I'm gonna say it's Mike. I don't know if you caught this, but when the killbot corners him, he's clearly pulling on a push door. Like we've all done it, but after the first try, you're like, oh, I'll try the other way. But he pulls like five times on this door handle, and it's clearly a push-open door. He's just like yanking, pulling on it like five or six times.

SPEAKER_01

I feel like Mike was just doing Mike.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, and he chews gum while he's eating out girls. So okay. We have a winner. We have a winner.

SPEAKER_01

I don't know. Greg, what about Susie? Susie's the one who had to get out of the damn thing because because Greg needs her.

SPEAKER_00

Well, they also they turned the heat up to in the air duct because they knew they went that way, so she was burning up in there. I was I was with Susie on that one because I'm claustrophobic. I ain't crawling around in that air duck very long. I'm like, get me the fuck out of here. Oh, it's it's hot now, too. I'm really need to get the fuck out.

SPEAKER_01

To give Mike a little bit of defense, like he had he brought his badge, he knew those robots might be out there. He also got crank darted, man. Because he pulled on the push door seven times. No, it was before that. Like, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_00

Like uh or I don't know. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But yeah. Anyway, anybody who do who's the dumbest? Are we saying are we saying Mike? Yeah. Mike and his toothy cunneling. Oh, okay. What else we got? Body.

SPEAKER_01

What do we got?

SPEAKER_00

Seven.

SPEAKER_01

Nope, nope, no, no, no. It's it's nine.

SPEAKER_00

I believe it is nine. Yes. Oh. It is. I never get that right.

SPEAKER_01

I had to run the math because it's the six of eight. Six of eight.

SPEAKER_00

The two of the two guys.

SPEAKER_01

And then the janitor, right? Is that it? Yep.

SPEAKER_00

That's three. Yeah, that's yeah. The janitor, the two control guys, and then six of the eight from the couples. And then would it be ten if you that that's assuming the guy in the presentation did not die? They said that was sleep dunk. Oh, he went home. So that's no.

SPEAKER_01

And then did that presentation on the left.

SPEAKER_00

You know, there's also three killbots. So it's nine. It's twelve if you count the killbots. Nah, they're hugs of metal, man. Yep. Sounds good. Nine is the number. A gore score.

SPEAKER_02

Not very gory at all.

SPEAKER_01

Three for the exploding head.

SPEAKER_02

I gave it I gave it a four.

SPEAKER_00

Four? Give it a four for the explosion. I said, yeah. I'm like, if if you got an exploding head, it's a minimum four. And they show it, and they show it again with the freeze frame at the end. Uh which is great. So I gave it a four.

SPEAKER_01

Did the mic effect like that was bad. Like that little loose flap of skin on Mike. I was like, oh yeah. That was really bad.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah, that was super awful makeup work on that. So, so so bad.

SPEAKER_01

It was no Heather Langenkamp and uh Merman.

SPEAKER_00

Nope. Alright, here's some fun facts for y'all. I read through a QA with Kelly Moroni. She mentioned that being from Minnesota, she wanted to be an actor, but that wasn't something anyone said back in the day because if you weren't from California or New York, you didn't really get to. So she became an apprentice at a theater and because they couldn't afford to pay her, she got to take acting classes for free. And in one season, she got to train with F. Murray Abraham, Stephen Lang, and William H. Macy. That's pretty pretty fucking good acting class, if I'm if I'm saying so myself. That's great. For free? For free. Good for her. Stephen Lang is he's Sisu, right?

SPEAKER_01

Oh, he's in C he's in Sisu.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01

And you Avatar. Mike, we gotta know. Did you watch either the Sisus yet?

SPEAKER_00

No, I haven't watched it in all Mike. I know. Right up your alley. Yeah, I know. I'll get there.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. He's the bomb. Mostly for you know, like recognize him. Avatar, VFW, VFW, and he was in the CSU sequel.

SPEAKER_01

Don't breathe. He's in like Yeah, Don't Breathe.

SPEAKER_00

That's the one I was thinking of, too. He's found his place. Don't breathe. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you what, if I met him, I'd be like, I don't trust you. Yeah. Because he's a creepy guy and everything. So BFW.

SPEAKER_00

He's a good guy. I mentioned this was filmed in the Sherman Oaks Galleria in California, the same mall that they used in Fast Times or Ridgemont High. And the same mall that they used in Commando in 1985.

SPEAKER_03

Oh nice.

SPEAKER_00

Some other sources cited that InnerSpace and T2 are also filmed at this mall, but most other places only noted Fast Times and Commando and other people. Where he's hacking the ATM? No. He does that outside. It's when they're when the they're stalking him through the uh you know, when before they have the the gunfight in the hallway, in the back hallway, whatever. But anyway, this Chopping Mall was filmed in 22 days. They filmed it after the mall closed every night. They had to be cleaned up and out of there by 9 a.m. every day. The original title was Killbots, but test audiences thought it was going to be a Transformers type movie, and so that's when it was changed to Chopping Mall. I agree with it. There's not much chopping. I like the cleverness, but there's not enough chopping. You know? No chopping. I want to see some missing limbs.

SPEAKER_01

Have you seen like I looked, I found a poster that actually had like a demonic hand holding like a bag. I'm like, that has nothing to do with this movie.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, no. On the poster, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Like like the like the Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Gross. Justin. This one's for you. In 2023, James Wan announced that he would be interested in doing a remake to Chopping Mall. Nice. Let's go. Like, what are you waiting for? Other than the fact that that nobody goes to malls anymore. So he'd have to work around that.

SPEAKER_01

But it's called Chopping Chopping Amazon.

SPEAKER_00

I want to see James Juan's Chopping Mall. That's for sure. Chopping Insta. Just set it in the 80s, like Stranger, like that season of Stranger things. There you go. Just set it in the 80s. Like who cares? Horror Hall of Fame. I think we already put the director in first ballot, right? Like we skipped the rules and just put him in, right? I don't think we did, Mike. No short. You guys don't like the Hills Have Thighs.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, as far as naming his movies, A plus.

SPEAKER_00

I thought everybody liked the Devil Wears Nada. All right. Uh kind of jumping. All right. I gotta Google that now.

SPEAKER_01

Don't don't do it on your work computer.

SPEAKER_00

Do it on your work computer. Is the killer a Hall of Famer? Killbots. Hall of Fame villains? Nah. I don't think so either. They're not on that level.

SPEAKER_01

They're on level one, two, and three.

SPEAKER_00

Right. Are any of the heroes here Hall of Famers? I'm saying no. No. Were there any movie props that you want to nominate? I can say the killbots because if we're not putting them in as a killer, you can't just put a killbot in the Hall of Fame because then the killbot's in the Hall of Fame.

SPEAKER_01

Well, Mike, Mike uh suggested a special section where we have videos playing. What about the instructional video or the promotional video for the killbots?

SPEAKER_00

Okay. I can play after the blood orgy from Event Horizon.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, just a different screen, different wall.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. That's an option. There wasn't really anything I found. I was like, I don't know, the Molotov cocktails.

SPEAKER_01

What about those stained couches that they were gonna sell?

SPEAKER_00

Tillbots.

SPEAKER_01

You want them in there?

SPEAKER_00

Leslie Zimplants? I don't know. The cigarette machine. The cigarette vending machine. So that 30 years from now, people can be like, what the fuck is that?

SPEAKER_01

How about that cook's shirt? Oh yeah. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00

That was disgusting.

SPEAKER_01

Nope.

SPEAKER_00

Put an apron on, he's just wiping food on in front of everybody. Yeah. Alright, the cook's shirt. Yep. Cook shirt. Alright, guys.

SPEAKER_01

Final thoughts on chopping mall. This is an a blast from the 80s. I am so glad you recommended it because you know it was it was perfect. It was all the 80s compacted into a 72-minute movie. What was 76 minutes?

SPEAKER_00

76, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Charlie loved it. Loved it. I mean, it was like totally brought me back to the 80s. I'm I'm sure I watched this this movie back when it came out. I don't remember exactly, but I mean, uh Chef's Kiss. I mean 80s, mall culture, and the the type of horror movies that were coming out then, it was great. I agree.

SPEAKER_01

I only think that I I do feel like they missed an opportunity to use Linda a lot better than they did. Why why else show no no, not in any way? Well, okay. Not in that way. But I'm saying, why else show us that she's like the mechanic and she can't fight off these robots? That one bothers me.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, agree. You're right. You're right. I agree. I agree with that one wholeheartedly.

SPEAKER_01

Do you like that she had she had the underwear that she was gonna wear? Like she's like, I guess you won't be needing these. It's like you're you're bringing different underwear, he doesn't care. Oh, he cared.

SPEAKER_00

Did you see him high team get out of there? He cared. He didn't like slammed on it. Yeah, hurry up and get to that party, quick.

SPEAKER_01

Anyway, yeah, gratuity nudity, the sci-fi limits. It wasn't just like a slasher film, but it was a slasher bot film, right? Yeah, but it was different, it was fun.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, this movie's just a fun hang. Really enjoy it. It's one that you can just throw on with a group of people and laugh your way through it. It's a fun, fun time. It's a trip down memory lane with all the 80s camp and the s the score and the soundtrack and the clothes and everything in the mall.

SPEAKER_01

It's just it's I tried I tried to find out if Robocop took any inspiration for their little fully automated guy. What was that one called?

SPEAKER_00

Not the actual RoboCop, but the one that Robocop, but the one that malfunctions in the opening in the beginning. I don't know. That thing was huge though. That thing took up the whole size of the fucking room. Yep. It was bad at stairs though. Doesn't Robocop say have a nice day?

SPEAKER_02

Have a nice day. Probably.

SPEAKER_00

Probably. Robocop ripped this off. All right. No, I love Robocop. Robocop's one of my favorites. Alright, guys. Our next host with the most. It's Charlie.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Charlie, the selection is yours.

SPEAKER_02

And I'm going to stick with 80s Camp Horror with a little bit of HP Lovecraft HP Lovecraft twist starring Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton coming back, back to back. From Beyond, 1986, same year. Oh, so good.

SPEAKER_00

Couple of 40th anniversaries. Chopping mall and From Beyond. Yep.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, From Beyond is that shit crazy. It really is. Like it is Lovecraftian. It is it is all hopped up on like hornball stuff, too.

SPEAKER_02

Like it's like reanimator. It's it's it's everything. It's yeah.

SPEAKER_01

There's like a little did yeah, save it for the pot, but I I like the pick.

SPEAKER_02

You're very welcome for my service.

SPEAKER_00

It's gonna get a high gore score.

SPEAKER_01

Uh yeah, it's gonna get a ball. Maybe, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

We'll see. Yeah. But higher than chopping malls. Higher than shopping mall.

SPEAKER_01

Uh, you know who else is in it? Ken Forey from uh Dawn of the Dead of the Dead. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yep, he sure is. And and a number of other things.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Can't wait. Sounds like a good one. All right, guys. Got a fancy way to take us out of here. Yeah. Thank you for listening to the All Guts So Gory podcast. If you like what we do here, best thing you can do for us is rate and review wherever you get your podcast. When you go to the shopping mall this weekend, tell your friends about it. Have them listen. If they like it, they can rate and review it as well. If you listen to us on cassette tape, make sure you don't look. Lose that team. But no, if you uh listen on Spotify, make sure you're actually following us on Spotify so you don't miss your favorite horror movies being broken down by us. Follow us on Instagram at all gutso gorypod. There's a link in our show notes where you can drop us some fan mail, talk to us about Chopping Mall or what your favorite horror movies might be. Maybe you got a request for a movie you want us to cover, something like that. Anything you want us to talk about. All right, guys, for Charlie, for Justin, I'm Mike. This is All Guts So Gory. Andy, take us home. This is the end, friend.