Nerds That Geek Blu Ray Review: 'Chopping Mall'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

Perhaps the beauty of growing up in the 1980's, is the amount of sheer wonder that came with the weekend trip to the video store where one could wander rows upon rows of VHS tapes and their glorious covers before taking home a gem that brought absolute joy to your heart, so much in fact...that you'd make sure to rent that movie next weekend as well.

That particular process is the genesis of my love of the horror genre, since my local video store always had a treasure trove of scary movies available for me to take home and years later, after that store closed since the times were a changin', DVD allowed me to collect my childhood favorites to enjoy once again...with a catch. Some of those films didn't quite receive much love or care in putting them onto disc, and the quality of these movies never quite improved. But there is a sudden surge in bringing horror back to life in high definition and it seems that all of my childhood favorites are getting a 21st Century facelift, and recently one of my all time B movie favorites received a blu ray release...1986's 'Chopping Mall'.

This fun and lighthearted romp revolved around teens being trapped in a mall in the middle of the night, surrounded and hunted by killer mall security robots and well, it truly is a sight to behold, filled to the brim with splatter and one liners and what I love most about this new release from Lionsgate is that as soon as you pop this new blu ray into your player, the exact feelings anyone experienced the first time they watched this epic feature come flooding back and that's largely in part thanks to the stunning high definition transfer that has been put together for us. The picture is flat out crystal clear and details that were never evident in the VHS or older DVD transfers are found here, allowing for every image to be bathed in 1980's neon, drawing the audience into this world in proper fashion and also demonstrating that the special effects in this film were absolutely top notch.

Honestly, they could have just released this new transfer with nothing else features wise and I still would have been happy, but there also extras abound to be found on this disc as well. There are three commentaries that I still need to sit through from Director Jim Wynorski, Co-Writer Steve Mitchell, Actress Kelli Maroney and a pair of film historians, along with some lovely interviews with the cast and crew, featurettes about specific aspects of the film and even a lost scene that is shown to us from the script that was never filmed, but it is so in line with the story that it would have been magical to have seen this in the picture. My only complaint, is that this release unfortunately doesn't have a surround sound audio mix. It's a minor complaint to say the least, since the original mono track present in this release does stay in line with the original experience we all enjoyed back in the day, but it would have been super cool to have this classic film get a facelift audio wise as well and immerse us with some surround effects.

If anything, the disc does compensate for that lack of surround sound with an isolated score option, but really all that matters in the end is that Chopping Mall has finally received the love and care from a distributor that it has always deserved. No more blurry transfers, no more muddled images, this is what Director Jim Wynorski intended for this film to look like and now every single time I pop this movie in, I'll be transported back to that magical Friday night, where something I had never seen before left my jaw dropped in pleasant surprise as Protector Robots exacted their robotic fury upon a group of poor teenagers trapped inside the Park Plaza Mall, and I couldn't be happier to own this one, and if you're a fan of this awesome and cheeseball flick, you need to add this new print to your collection as well. 

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