Shot mostly on location in the Sherman Oaks Galleria in LA, Chopping Mall features a bunch of teens who hold a raucous, bawdy after-hours party in a furniture store until they start getting viciously murdered by some malfunctioning security robots. That’s all you’d get if you read it off the back of a VHS cover, so that’s all we’re giving you.

Chopping Mall deserves more than a spot on a Letterboxd list called, like, “So Bad It’s Good LOL [broccoli emoji x2]” but, to be honest, just barely. It was intentionally trashy when it was new, and there’s not much substance to reclaim or unpack — but there is a certain amount of anthropological interest in seeing what 1986 America took for granted in its trash. Like that other polestar of mall-based horror movies, Dawn of the Dead, it can be read as a criticism of shallow consumerism and the tendency of capitalism to value property over humanity. Why’d you install tranquilizer guns in your security robots in the first place! But it’s also poignant watching teenagers be teenagers. The present is as distant from this movie as this movie was from It’s a Wonderful Life, and if that fact doesn’t get you thinking about the wildly variable pace of cultural development, maybe you should pick something else off that Letterboxd list.

This screening is held in the Taylor Screening Room. At ticket purchase, you will be asked to select your reserved seat(s). Seating is limited; it is recommended to purchase tickets ahead of time.

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