It’s unusual for a film from the low-budget realm, especially of the horror/comedy variety, to have such an ambitious and silly high-concept. Like, you could make a pretty nuts n’ bolts slasher movie set in a shopping centre with the title Chopping Mall and probably make your money back. But no, the filmmakers decided to go that extra mile and make a movie about a mall policed by freakin’ killer robots to hang their slasher shenanigans onto. It’s so silly, but certainly entertaining.

There are mad splashes of OTT gore you’ll be thankful for (exploding heads!) and a welcome roster of familiar character actors – Barbara Crampton, Dick Miller – to perk you up when things get a bit too routine. The film doesn’t betray the potential of its location either with plenty of tooling up of mall appliances wielded as artillery against the killbots. I’d say it cribs royally from RoboCop but it predates that flick by a good year. Who knows, maybe Verhoeven just really loves Chopping Mall? Absolutely the kind of wacky genre mash-up you’ll watch and want to tell your friends about immediately.

Watched on Amazon Prime.