Drive Thru (2007)

Directors:

Brendan Cowles
Shane Kuhn

Writers:

Brendan Cowles (writer)
Shane Kuhn (writer)

Genre:

Comedy | Horror

Tagline:

At Hella Burger, It Won't Be The Food That Kills You... But You'll Wish It Did.

Plot:

Horror gets Super Sized when Horny The Clown, the demonic mascot of "Hella-Burger," starts slashing Orange County teenagers with his meat cleaver from Hell.

Plot Keywords:

Horny The Clown | Meat Cleaver | Blood | Killer Clown | Statutory Rape

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Leighton Meester	...	Mackenzie Carpenter
Nicholas D'Agosto	...	Fisher Kent
Melora Hardin	...	Marcia Carpenter
Lola Glaudini	...	Detective Brenda Chase
Larry Joe Campbell	...	Detective Dwayne Crockers
Van De La Plante	...	Horny the Clown / Archie Benjamin
Penn Badgley	...	Van
Sita Young	...	Val Espinoza
Rachael Bella	...	Starfire
John Gilbert	...	Jack Benjamin
Morgan Spurlock	...	Robbie, The Hella-Burger Manager
Edward DeRuiter	...	Brandon Meeks
Haven Lamoureux	...	Tony
Paul Ganus	...	Bill Carpenter
Robert Curtis Brown	...	Bert McCandless

Also Known As:

Hellaburger (USA) (working title)

MPAA:

Rated R for strong horror violence and gore, drug use, language and some sexual content.

Runtime:

83 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

Germany:16 | USA:R | Australia:R (2007)

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Armada Pictures

Goofs:

Crew or equipment visible: Camera crew reflected on the side of the truck when the police are dusting for fingerprints.

Quotes:

Horny the Clown: When you die alone, no one can hear you scream.

Movie Connections:

References Happy Birthday to Me (1981)

Mildly watchable but weak slasher

I can't say that I thought all that much of this one. It has the right idea,but it never really achieves enough in the way of laughs, suspense or gore to be a particularly attractive proposition. The plot sees various teens butchered by the malign fast food mascot Horny the clown and an obnoxious emo heroine seeking to find out why before its too late. As far as pluses go in this film, it does have a quick pace, a nice bodycount with a couple of neat moments and a well designed villain. Though not scary, Horny's costume at least looks the business, he pretty much looks exactly what you might expect a killer fast food mascot to look like. Lastly, the film has a determinedly eighties style flow to it, with a classic generic back story, idiotic stereotypical characters, bad music and dumb lines. All this mixed together allows the film to zip along, never getting boring, but at the same time, though it invites cosy reminiscences of cheesy slasher classics, the film never reaches their heights. The biggest issue is the relative lack of grue. Many of the kills are of screen, there are a few after the event bloodied bodies and the of the on screen killings, only one, maybe two succeed in being properly satisfying. I don't mind films soft pedalling the nastiness, but this film fails to make up for it with good stalking or suspense scenes. Another big problem is that the main character, played by Leighton Meester is simply not likable and her boyfriend, played by Nicholas D'Agosto, isn't much better. Its nearly impossible to build up empathy when the lead characters are tedious, rude little so and so's hat you just want to clip around the ears for their bad attitudes. Clearly a few annoying characters aren't too bad to have around as they make for good kill fodder but when the main character seems to constantly invite your dislike it does get quite tiresome. None of the other characters are much better, apart from a nice cameo from Morgan Spurlock, though no one has quite as much time irritating the audience as the leads. I didn't think much of the humour in this film either, it seems perched in between semi serious slasher and outright spoof but never properly reconciles the two, with the result that a lot of the humour falls flat. Still, I found this film hard to fully dislike. For all that it isn't terribly good it at least didn't baffle me with badness like some of the other recent horrors I have encountered on late night television recently. In a way, I kinda found its faults occasionally charming, like the pointless inclusion of a ouija board in proceedings or the lame music because taken along with the random neat moments it gave off the air of a film trying hard, doing its best, really trying to charm. It seemed very much on the right track in a lot of places and so I ended up with a fair amount of goodwill towards it. So, whilst I wouldn't recommend this as a quality film, it is a fair enough time waster for those who have a yen for this sort of thing.