“You smell like pepperoni.”
“Well, if that’s the way you feel…”
“Wait a minute.”
“What?”
“I like pepperoni.”

Take some malfunctioning killer robots, throw them in a mall with eight frisky teens with plans for an after-hours party in a furniture store, and you’ve got Chopping Mall, a likable if fatuous horror comedy that, at the very least, features an incredible exploding head. Helmed by prolific B-movie/spoof horror filmmaker Jim Wynorski working under the indispensable tutelage of Roger Corman (it was produced by Corman’s wife, Julie), the cheeky romp gets by on the strength of its winsome cast and references to older exploitation films.

The setup involves the introduction of three security robots at the Park Plaza Mall, which come equipped with tasers, lasers, tranquilizers, and cutting tools. Though there is some concern voiced by various shop owners (Mary Woronov and Paul Bartel sneakily reprise their roles from Eating Raoul as two of the proprietors) when the high tech guardians are introduced by a Secure-Tronics rep (Paul Coufos), their fears are quickly assuaged by a live demonstration. All one needs to do when confronted by a robot is present it with a staff ID badge. It’s a foolproof system, complete with automatic metal shutters that lock down the entire facility at midnight. Except no one seems to have considered that a lightning strike might give the machines sentience, or that once sentient, they would be homicidal.

Once the killer robots come alive, they shortly zap a janitor (Dick Miller as his character from Corman’s A Bucket of Blood and Joe Dante’s Hollywood Boulevard—I mean, what is this, the Roger Corman Cinematic Universe?) and gruesomely dispatch a duo of human security personnel (Gerrit Graham, Morgan Douglas). Soon, they move onto the group of eight teenage mall employees who have picked the wrong night to stay late and party at the Furniture King. Six of them are already paired off, leaving Allison (Kelli Maroney) and Ferdy (Tony O’Dell) as a blind date pair who will undoubtedly survive by virtue of their perceived purity. While the others guzzle beer and canoodle, the awkward couple makes small talk and takes in Corman’s Attack of the Crab Monsters on a late-night channel.

It’s a romantic evening of adolescent fun until gum-chomping jock Mike (John Terlesky) heads out for some post-coital cigarettes and gets his throat slit by a killbot (I believe Mike is the only character who is asked for an ID card, after that the bots just wantonly slaughter). His girl Leslie (Suzee Slater) finds him by the vending machine, at which point the robots give chase. The rest of the group watches in horror from the relative safety of the Furniture King as Leslie has her head pulpified by a well-placed laser blast. “Thank you, have a nice day,” the robot says. Miraculously, after that amazing display of marksmanship, the robots prove Stormtrooper-esque in their aiming disability as they gradually whittle down the four other survivors one by one—first Suzie (Barbara Crampton, criminally underutilized), who is zapped in the leg and then incinerated; then Greg (Nick Segal), who is thrown over the third floor railing; then Rick (Russell Todd) and Linda (Karrie Emmerson). The dwindling group plunders a sporting goods store (winkingly named Peckinpah’s) for military-grade firearms and an automotive parts store for gasoline and flares in an attempt to retaliate, but it’s trickery that finally saves Allison and Ferdy.

Note that at no point does a rogue cyborg fill a shopping bag with body parts as the film’s poster would suggest. In fact, the film is not very scary at all. But if it fails as a mall-based slasher, it is mildly successful at utilizing a game cast of B-movie all-stars to poke fun at its blend of genres and send up the schlock of yore. Indeed, Wynorski proves much more capable of visual gags and low-grade sci-fi action than suspenseful horror, a notion that his wider body of work bears out. Folks like to tout Chopping Mall for its assemblage of talent, but it underwhelms when set against a Night of the Comet (which features a scene shot at the same mall) or a Re-Animator or a Piranha.