Interview: Co-Writer Steve Mitchell Reflects on CHOPPING MALL

While talking with writer/director Steve Mitchell about King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen, his new feature-length documentary that celebrates and explores the decades-spanning career of maverick storyteller Larry Cohen, I had the opportunity to chat about a cult classic that he was involved with over 30 years ago: Jim Wynorski’s Chopping Mall, starring Kelli Maroney, Barbara Crampton, Tony O’Dell, and Russell Todd, who square off against a squad of killer robots inside a shopping mall after hours.

Mitchell wrote the script for Chopping Mall with Wynorski, and the duo collaborated on the film from beginning to end, with Roger Corman’s Concorde-New Horizons handling distribution of the indie horror movie in March of 1986. During our interview, Mitchell discussed his collaborative process with Wynorski, how his experiences on the original Transformers series tied into Chopping Mall, and how surprising it is to him that the film has endured with fans for over 30 years:

When I figured out Chopping Mall was a cult classic, it was very unexpected for me. One day, Jim called me up and we were chatting about this and that, and he asked me, "When was the last time you went to the Chopping Mall IMDb page?" I said, “I don't know, I have no idea.” He said, "Check it out." This was within the last ten years, maybe even a little less than that. So, I went to that page, and it was then that I discovered that we were, I won't go so far as to say cult classic at the time, because I know that we are a cult classic now, but that there was such an incredible positive response to the movie overall.  

Because when Roger released Chopping Mall theatrically, it was kind of a flop. It didn't quite land at the time. That's why there was the title change. Originally, it was called Killbots. This was back in the day when the Transformers cartoon series was very popular. I also wrote for the Transformers series. Roger killed the movie under that title and then said, "Well, how do I make this movie make some money?" He had the theatrical rights. He split the rights with Vestron, because Vestron financed the movie, and they had the home video rights.

So, Roger said, "All right, let's change the title," and Jim has told stories about some guy in the projection room saying, "Why don't you call it Chopping Mall?" And that's how that title came to be. I wasn't there when that happened, so I can't validate that, but they changed the title to Chopping Mall and sold it as a slasher movie. At the end of the day, it's not really a slasher movie per se. It's not even a horror movie per se. It's more of an action movie with a horror frosting to it. But it just took off on home video. I heard that it sold over 500,000 units, and that's back in the day when Vestron was probably wholesaling those things out for 40 bucks a pop.

So, the movie really found its audience on home video. And the thing that's sad about that, and I'm getting to something, so just bear with me, but we shot the movie open mat, meaning it was the full 35 millimeter aperture, we composed it for one to one-eight-five, which was the theatrical ratio. Roger didn't want us to put a hard mat on the lens for one to one-eight-five, because he knew it was going to go to video with Vestron, and that may have been one of their requirement specs, I don't know. So the version everybody saw on videotape was not how the movie was really composed. That's number one. Two, the master was made from a release print, so the color wasn't as good, and the sound was awful, too. It was this very compressed optical track.  

I was there for every step of the movie, including when the movie was mixed, and even though it was mono, it still sounded good. We had higher highs and lower lows—the soundtrack was just beefier, is the word I usually use. And so, people were not really seeing it the way it was intended. Flash forward 29 years, Jim had had an agreement with Roger, I think, to do a theatrical restoration with the idea that the movie was going to get distributed theatrically, for maybe midnight shows and stuff like that.

So, Jim is responsible for finding the elements, and for finding the mag track. He found the guy to do the restoration. It was a guy who had a lot of experience, and the film, as it looks now, still has a very “film” look to it. The important thing was that the Blu-ray of Chopping Mall, which exists now, is the first time the movie really looks the way it should look, at least on home video in terms of the proper aspect ratio and, most importantly, the quality of the mono sound. They can see it as it was intended by the filmmakers.

When him and I made that movie, we just said to each other, “What do we want to see? What do we want to do?” This was a couple of young guys, full of themselves, just trying to make a movie they wanted to see. One of the reasons why the guys break into a sporting goods store and arm themselves up with guns, is because I'd seen so many dead teenager movies where the teens are just running around screaming, and they don't do anything to defend themselves. At some point, I said to Jim, “Goddamn it, my teenagers are going to have guns, and we're going to shoot guns in the mall to try and kill some robots.” The whole movie was filled with ideas like that, things that we wanted to see. Somehow, and I'm not entirely sure how it worked out, but somehow, it just all came together.

I look back on that movie today and I think to myself sometimes, what if the robots didn't work? We would have been screwed. I think we had one night where one of the robots had a problem, maybe. I directed second unit on that movie, and I think there's a shot where I had to do five takes to get it right, but that was maybe the toughest shot I ever had to do on second unit. We were blessed. What if the robots had been like the shark in Jaws and they never worked? We would have been so screwed.

I could talk about Chopping Mall forever, but at the end of the day, it's very gratifying to know I made a movie back in the ’80s that people still love today. They do love it. We went to a 29th anniversary screening, and it was like our high school reunion for the movie, because seven out of the eight actors were there, all the key crew members were there, too. It was fantastic, and we saw it with an audience. The audience went nuts. They loved it. There's nothing better for a filmmaker when you see a movie with an audience and they love it. Whether it was 30 years ago or 30 weeks ago. It doesn't matter. The other thing is that Chopping Mall, in many ways, is apparently as popular now as it has ever been, and that's really trippy to me.