Chopping Mall focuses on a lot of mall, but no chopping 

As far as shooting went, Wynorski and Mitchell were making a typical Corman movie, so while they note their low budget ($800,000) and quick schedule (22 days), they don’t bother with the usual commentary-track litany of wishes for more money or time. They do gripe about the lousy caterer, about the MPAA censoring one extended fiery death, about “always fighting the sun” because the mall’s skylight dictated the end of a shooting night, and about Pat, the mall liaison who hated them. The sparks used to indicate robo-laser impacts scuffed a pole at one point, and Pat never stopped vocally blaming them for it: “Whenever there was a problem, she would bring up the scar on the pole. I mean, there were tons of stuff in this mall that the kids normally would just deface it, but because we had nicked a little piece of that pole, we were on the hit list for the rest of this show.” “Oh yeah, we weren’t gonna get any Christmas cards from Pat.” They suspect that Commando did a lot of damage to the mall, and they took the flak for it. Fortunately, the mall’s owner was on their side, probably because he enjoyed hanging around the female cast members: “It helps to have hot chicks on the set.” “It certainly does. It distracts people.”

Also, the film called for a character to be fatally thrown from the third story of the mall, so the stunt crew set up an airbag on the ground floor, and invited Wynorski to try the leap for fun. He didn’t have the courage for the full monty, but did jump from the second floor, “and successfully broke a rib.” He “kept mum” about the injury because he was embarrassed, and because he still had a film to direct.

Finally, they note in the opening scene that the cast is visibly nodding off. Wynorski suggests it’s because they were shooting at 4 a.m., and had to use periodic loud noises to keep the actors from falling asleep; Mitchell says it’s just that the scene is really boring, but they had to get in the exposition somehow.

Comments on the cast: On Kerrie Emerson: “Very lovely, very sexy. Pay attention to her blue jeans. Blue jeans never looked better on any woman on the planet, ever. Or at least in 1980.” And during her underwear scene, “Pardon me while I sort of soak in Kerrie Emerson here.” On Suzee Slater: “Being a breast man, as I’ve been for the last 50 years, I said, ‘That girl’s for me! Let’s put her in the picture!’” On the female cast in general: “The girls were just great in this scene. None of them complained. I mean, I had no complaints from anyone on this show. Everyone was having too much fun.”

The male actors get less lascivious attention, with Wynorski and Mitchell running down their CVs in knowledgeable detail, and particularly praising John Terlesky as “an incredibly inventive actor” for his decision to chew gum in every scene, even when in bed naked with Slater.

Inevitable dash of pretension: Wynorski and Mitchell rarely go pretentious; they openly acknowledge that the film looks cheap in spots, sarcastically chuckling, “There you go, there’s some high-quality rotoscoping” over the laser shots, or noting the ideas they stole from Commando, Dawn Of The Dead, Wild Bunch, and The Good, The Bad And The Ugly. But they do take some mid-film downtime to boast about how their movie is a much-sought-after “cult favorite” that really stands out from the crowd of otherwise-similar “dead teenager movies,” probably due to the use of robots. “And it’s got the second greatest head explosion of all time!” Wynorski enthuses as one cast member ends up on the wrong end of a laser. “Check this out! Watch this! Too cool, too cool!”

Commentary in a nutshell: Wynorski, on a scene where Barbara Crampton slowly peels off her blouse and bra: “And this is a very key shot for the movie, for Roger, and for you out there.” Mitchell: “I think at one point, when Barbara had seen this movie, she had said—I don't know if it was to us or to somebody else—‘I have lovely breasts, don’t I?’ Well, I think the answer is yes.”