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October Movies: Chopping Mall (1986), Ice Cream Man (1995)


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This movie had a very misleading VHS cover and title

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It leads you to think its going to be a slasher and there's no chopping going on in this mall. The movie was originally released as "Killbots", which is a little more accurate but not quite as catchy.

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  • The title was changed to October Movies: Chopping Mall (1986), Ice Cream Man (1995)
On 10/1/2024 at 9:59 AM, Gloves said:

You can watch the whole thing free on YouTube! 

I watched it on Roku. I would have ads on Youtube but I didn't for this. Just saying another option. Great pick, btw. Thoroughly enjoyed.

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Chopping Mall rocks. I love the mall setting and the synth score.

the opening meeting scene featured cameos from the couple from Eating Raoul and the Tall Man from Phantasm

What do you think the cost of the 3 protector robots + a full time technician staff and monitoring station would be vs just hiring a few regular mall cops?

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Administrator · Posted

Watched Chopping Mall last night with my wife, she'd never seen it before so decided to remedy that. She enjoyed it, and said that the head explosion was probably her favorite part, with the obviously fake spiders being a close second. Great movie, well worth a watch.

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Ice Cream Man was pretty bad, but I have to admit Clint Howard is perfect as a horror villain with his naturally unsettling appearance and making his voice sound like Billy Bob Thorton in Sling Blade. I could see how this could have easily been a franchise... too bad the kickstarter for the sequel failed miserably.

I liked the weird long scene with Jan Michael Vincent casually strolling through the insane asylum from hell. It was a baffling choice to have a kid with a stuffed shirt play the "fat kid".

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On 10/1/2024 at 7:15 PM, Link said:

4/5, awesome movie, I'd recommend it. Oh shit, I just noticed there's a rifftrax. Ugghhhh do I watch it again?

I just started watching the rifftrax for it. It's pretty funny, but I don't know if I want to watch the whole movie again so soon. To those who haven't watched this yet, you might want to just go straight to the rifftrax version (if you're interested)

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"I'm just not used to be chased around a mall in the middle of the night by killer robots."

The best horror movie that takes place in a mall. No wait, that is Dawn of the Dead. Ok the second best horror movie that takes place in a mall. Shoot, Night of the Comet is pretty good too. How about one of the top 5 horror movies to take place in a mall?

A group of young adults decide to throw a party after hours in the mall, only to be hunted down by the mall’s new security team, the killbots. The script is a bit more self-aware like the above quoted line and has some nice black comedy such as the advertisement that opens the film. The effects are hit and miss, much of the time there is a cut away right before a big stunt or kill and we just see the aftermath. But when the effects are on they are really on such as the 2nd best exploding head on film next to Scanners.

There are editing mistakes. The girls abandon the plan to safely escape the parking garage for no reason. The lasers hit one of the character’s arms and they totally no sell it while one shot is lethal at other times. An elevator explodes for no reason. Someone burns to death in 15 seconds, I mean your clothes and your skin would burn but you wouldn’t be dead it is called degrees of burns. The killbots have various means of killing but nobody gets chopped up despite the title of exquisite title of Chopping Mall. Despite or maybe because of some of these goofs, it still ends up being a fun flick

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23 hours ago, G-type said:

Ice Cream Man was pretty bad, but I have to admit Clint Howard is perfect as a horror villain with his naturally unsettling appearance and making his voice

Honestly, the first act had me rolling my eyes, but he became super actually creepy and menacing and dangerous with understandable villain motivation in the second half. I kind of hated the asylum scene - and then I loved everything after it.

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As for Chopping Mall, my major gripe is all the guns. There's maybe 50-100 shots fired and only one of those has any effect, when it was lucky enough to hit a bot's vision visor. Most are running away and stopping to turn and shoot. Why would you stop as a chase victim like that after so many instances where they seem (and 99% are) bulletproof? Other than that, I'll say again it's a great horror movie. side note, I thought I had a VHS copy. I don't, but I'm pretty sure I saw it in the video store in my first neighborhood living on my own, from which I do have some tapes from their going out of business sale 😢

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Posted (edited)
13 minutes ago, fox said:

The girls abandon the plan to safely escape the parking garage for no reason.

the heat in the air ducts had been turned up so high that they had to wrap their hands in clothing to not get burned. They were literally baking. That, combined with a claustrophobia freak out and worrying about her boyfriend, and she couldn't make it any further.

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Administrator · Posted
2 hours ago, Link said:

As for Chopping Mall, my major gripe is all the guns. There's maybe 50-100 shots fired and only one of those has any effect, when it was lucky enough to hit a bot's vision visor. Most are running away and stopping to turn and shoot. Why would you stop as a chase victim like that after so many instances where they seem (and 99% are) bulletproof? Other than that, I'll say again it's a great horror movie. side note, I thought I had a VHS copy. I don't, but I'm pretty sure I saw it in the video store in my first neighborhood living on my own, from which I do have some tapes from their going out of business sale 😢

They prove pretty early on that these kids can't aim for shit, which would be pretty true to life. Everyone thinks they're a sharpshooter but when panic and the reality of a gun in the hand happens, you're gonna miss. 

It's one of those movies where it's fun to be like "in this situation I would...". For one, there's at least one kiosk where the bots would never see you if you just got inside and laid down. 

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Happy birthday Billy! Spookies is a jumbled mish-mash of zombies, evil wizards, a haunted house, rubber creatures, and hapless horror-movie victims. It has a lot of great elements, but it never pulls them together in a coherent way. The pacing is uneven, with the characters frequently fumbling around the house aimlessly before something good happens. Reading about the contentious production explains a lot about why it turned out the way it did. (The financer yanked the project away from the directors and hired a new director to film a whole bunch of new material and then cut it all together under a new title.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The creepiest part of Burial Ground is Michael, the little boy played by a small 25 year old man with a permanently haunted expression who also wants to bang his mom. “momma.. oh momma!” 
The zombies are all wearing dirty nightgowns and these gross but unarticulated masks so they tend to rely on strangulation and ripping out guts with their hands. Any eating or biting is mostly implied.

Also how are these people so bad at getting away from extremely slow moving zombies? Almost every death is like that henchman in Austin Powers getting run over by the steamroller.

Steamroller GIF

Edited by G-type
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