Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989)

To hear the creators of Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989) tell it, their great script was basically torn to shreds in the editing room. It's hard to take them at their word, but they're not wrong to try and distance themselves from this turkey. The film is perhaps best remembered now as the launching pad for Pauly Shore's acting career, despite this not even really being a fact. He's in this, but he'd already been on 21 Jump Street and had been doing his schtick on MTV by the time this movie finally got released. His character Buzz does indeed moon a security camera in a clothing store dressing room at one point—malls, remember them?—and that's probably reason enough to check this flick out because it's otherwise a bad movie in search of a solid direction. Does it want to be camp? Morgan Fairchild is kicking about and she's usually a good indication that camp is afoot. The problem is likely in the director and multiple different producers wanting totally different products and it feels like they were shooting a different movie depending upon which producer was present on set that day. It's a mess of a movie, but it's got its charms and if you really want to see mall culture as it was—not the romanticized Stranger Things, Wonder Woman 1984 mall—you could do worse than a double feature of this and Chopping Mall. Just make sure you watch this one first. That other one is so much better. If this movie had been that movie, this movie would've been good.