Chopping Mall is a 1986 American independent[1] techno-horror film co-written and directed by Jim Wynorski, produced by Julie Corman, and starring Kelli Maroney, Tony O'Dell, John Terlesky, Russell Todd, Paul Bartel, Mary Woronov, and Barbara Crampton.

It focuses on three high-tech security robots turning maniacal and killing teenage employees inside a shopping mall after dark.

After it performed poorly with test audiences, the film was re-titled Chopping Mall, and approximately 19 minutes were excised.

In the years since its release, Chopping Mall has gone on to develop a cult following, and been subjected to film criticism for its perceived themes of human consumption and excess during the Reagan Era in the United States.

Park Plaza Mall has just installed a state-of-the-art security system, including shutters across all exits and three high-tech robots programmed to disable and apprehend thieves using tasers and tranquilizer guns.

Once the mall closes for the night, the couples begin to have sex, drink, and party inside the furniture store.

Outside, a lightning storm strikes the mall several times and damages the computer controlling Protectors 1, 2 and 3, which malfunction and kill the technicians and a janitor before starting their routine patrol.

While the men set up the elevator as a booby trap, the killbots ambush the women and ignite Suzie by shooting her gasoline can, burning her alive.

Rick tries to calm him down, and Ferdy suggests destroying the killbots' main control center in hopes of shutting them all down.

On the run, the four remaining survivors, Allison, Ferdy, Rick, and Linda also find the first robot recovered after its earlier defeat.

Protector 1 corners Allison, but Ferdy rescues her and shoots it point-blank, damaging its laser just before he falls unconscious.

Film scholar Craig Ian Mann compares the film favorably to George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978)—also set in a shopping mall—which he classifies as an "anti-capitalist parable for the Jimmy Carter years," suggesting that Chopping Mall functions in a similar way as a comment on consumption during the Reagan Era.

[2] Mann suggests that the robots in the film, even when malfunctioning, serve as mechanical enforcers of workplace discipline and capitalist interests.

"Everything I learned in film school didn't count, but what he said made a lot of sense and I still have that yellow pad and I live by it.

[5] Concorde Pictures gave the film a regional test market release under the title Killbots on March 21, 1986.

[12] After it fared poorly with audiences, the film was truncated and re-titled Chopping Mall, under which it was theatrically released in Pittsburgh on September 5, 1986, and in New York City on November 14, 1986.

It was released for the first time on Blu-ray on September 27, 2016 as part of Lionsgate's new Vestron Video Collector's Series line.