Our very own Adam Riske has codified the Mall Movie, which is a movie that would specifically play at the mall during its theatrical run. Only certain kinds of movies are mall movies. For this 24-hour marathon, we're going to interpret it more literally and program a day and night of movies with malls in them. I'm nothing if not super unoriginal. As Robin Sparkles says, let's go to the mall!
10am - Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982, dir. Amy Heckerling)
We'll kick things off with one of the all-time great teen comedies and a movie that undoubtedly helped kick off 1980s mall culture. Much of the drama revolves around the Sherman Oaks Galleria, where several of the characters work and hang out. I love the way Amy Heckerling and writer Cameron Crowe use the mall as a hub where everyone gathers outside of school because this movie is anthropological in its degree of 1980s detail. The mall used to matter.
Another appearance by the Sherman Oaks Galleria, maybe the most famous movie mall of all time outside of Monroeville. The first R-rated movie I ever saw features a memorable scene in which Arnold Schwarzenegger takes on a bunch of mall security guards, rips a phone booth out of the ground, swings down on an inflated decoration from the ceiling, and lands on top of the elevator in pursuit of David Patrick Kelly. This movie is nonstop carnage and I love it.
1pm - Scenes from a Mall (1991, dir. Paul Mazursky)
I've never actually seen this Paul Mazursky comedy because I remember the reviews being terrible when it came out in the early '90s, and considering it stars Bette Midler and Woody Allen as a married couple on the precipice of divorce, I haven't been in a big rush to see it in recent years. I guess this is my chance.
2:30pm - Jasper Mall (2020, dir. Bradford Thomason & Brett Whitcomb)
Another movie in this marathon I've never seen, this one comes recommended by Adam Riske and Rob, who covered it in a Reserved Seating back when it was released. Because so many of these mall movies are comedies and horror movies (as we'll see in a little bit), it will be nice to break things up with a documentary, even if it sounds a little bit like a downer.
4pm - Valley Girl (1983, dir. Martha Coolidge)
More mall-adjacent than mall-centric, you couldn't really have a movie called Valley Girl in the 1980s and not have at least some scenes set at the mall. I used to have some bad takes about this movie but I've grown wiser and more mature and now I it for the terrific teen comedy it is. No movie with both EG Daily and Michelle Meyrink could ever not be great. Oh, and Nicolas Cage and Deborah Foreman and The Plimsouls doing "The Oldest Story in the World." Every song is a banger. Now I don't want to have to wait until 4 to watch this one.
5:45pm - Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009, dir. Steve Carr)
I guess we can't really program a mall marathon and not include Paul Blart, a middling Happy Madison comedy in which Kevin James plays a mall security officer who has to do a Die Hard and stop a bunch of criminals on his own. I remember thinking this movie was probably a decent version of what it set out to be, but I had a higher Kevin James tolerance in 2009 because I used to sometimes watch The King of Queens in reruns. I never saw the sequel and we won't be watching it as part of our mall marathon. It's stolen valor.
7:30pm - Dawn of the Dead (1978, dir. George A. Romero)
Our Primetime Pizza slot goes to my favorite mall movie of all time, George A. Romero's original Dawn of the Dead, in which a band of survivors hole up in Pittsburgh's Monroeville Mall to escape a zombie apocalypse. I always call A Nightmare on Elm Street my favorite horror movie but maybe I'm wrong and it's Dawn of the Dead, seeing as most days it would sneak into my All Time Top 5 (not just horror). I know it's a little gory to be watching while eating but we've seen so much worse in the years since that I don't think the gore effects have quite the same impact that they did when I first saw this in high school.
10pm - Observe & Report (2009, dir. Jody Hill)
Paul Blart's much, much darker cousin, Observe & Report is one of my favorite movies of 2009 and one of my favorite comedies of the 2000s. It's a mall cop riff on Taxi Driver with a brilliant Seth Rogen performance as a disturbed wannabe cop and an even more brilliant Anna Faris as a department store employee who is also the Worst Person Alive. Big ups for one of the best comic payoffs of any movie ever. I know Jody Hill has been working in TV for the last 15 years but I wish he would make another movie because this one so, so great.
11:30pm - Chopping Mall (1986, dir. Jim Wynorski)
We'll head into the overnight with a series of mall horror movies beginning with Jim Wynorski's second-best film about killer robots stalking some teens spending the night in the mall. For what it is, this movie kind of rips: the score is great, there are some really good kill scenes (dat exploding head), and the cast that includes Kelli Maroney, Barbara Crampton, Dick Miller, Paul Bartel, and Mary Woronov elevate all of it. We could do way worse for mall horror. It's called Hide and Go Shriek.
1am - Night of the Comet (1984, dir. Thom Eberhardt)
One of my favorite '80s movies finds sister Kelli Maroney (back to back KM!) and Catherine Mary Stewart surviving the apocalypse and taking over the mall after everyone's gone. Part teen fantasy, part science fiction, part horror movie, all radical, Night of the Comet rules and will keep us going as everything gets a little dire overnight.
3am - Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989, dir. Richard Friedman)
I have a pretty high tolerance for '80s slashers so I don't mind Phantom of the Mall, but this is probably the dregs of our 24-hour marathon. As '80s updates of Phantom of the Opera are concerned, we'd be much better off with Dwight H. Little's remake. But that's not set in a mall! This one is and stars Pauly Shore in a supporting role. I wish I liked it more than I do, but as watchable trash in the middle of the night it's totally serviceable.
4:45am - Security (2017, dir. Alain DesRochers)
The last of my unseen movies of the marathon, this is one I honestly had never heard of before Googling a list of "mall movies." Antonio Banderas plays a former Marine turned mall cop who has to lead a team of security guards against a bunch of mercenaries (led by Ben Kingsley) who invade the mall. Sounds quite a bit like Paul Blart done as a straight action movie. Whatever, I'm down, especially at this time of the morning.
6:30am - Dawn of the Dead (2004, dir. Zack Snyder)
George Romero's Dawn of the Dead is so good that we can program the remake into the same marathon and not even feel like we're watching the same movie twice, mostly because this new version really only has "mall" and "zombies" in common with the original. I still really enjoy the Zack Snyder-directed, James Gunn-scripted remake as a movie about nothing but visceral jumps and surface-level scares, which is why it will probably be fun to wake up to after the overnight section. The cast is good and the thing moves like a running zombie.
8:30am - Mallrats (1995, dir. Kevin Smith)
We'll close out our marathon with Kevin Smith's ode to the mall and to '80s movies, featuring a sublime and star-making performance by Jason Lee. As someone who grew up on indies in the '90s, I'll always have a soft spot for Kevin Smith and his '90s run including Mallrats, but I can still recognize it's not all that great despite its reputation as a beloved cult classic. I've seen it so many times (the early DVD is one of my all-time favorites) and pretty much know it by heart, so this will be a big warm blanket of a closer for our marathon.
Meet me at Auntie Anne's!
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