Drive Thru: Movie Review #16

DRIVE THRU (2007)

Hungry for a killer meal? Drive Thru is another roller coaster of a killer clown movie and one of my personal faves since Killer Klownz From Outer Space. The film opens in Orange County CA with a crew of white wanna-be gangsters craving HellaBurger, and when they roll up to a dark drive thru joint that resembles Jack in the Box, all "hell" literally breaks loose. Our villain Horny The Clown appears within the first 3 minutes with very little buildup or suspense, fully decked out in a Hot Topic evil clown get-up to wreak havoc on the hip-hoppers, killing all of them before the credits even roll (notable here is the "face in the deep frier" kill scene).

The lead role of Mackenzie Carpenter (played by Leighton Meester, your typical 20 year old playing 17, who later strips down to her black underwear and made me feel like a pedophile for smiling) kicks off the film by turning down her boyfriend who wants sex, claiming that she'll be "18 next week." Classic! At a rockin high-school house party, Mackenzie and a bunch of kids play with a Ouija board, asking what will happen to their boring lives. After receiving a creepy message from the board that tells the license plate of the now-dead white boys, they are later haunted by even creepier messages from a magic 8-ball, of all things!

Mackenzie then works late in the yearbook office and hangs with Lenny the Janitor (the best character in the film) who claims he has to "pull a brown gator thats cloggin up the staff shitter." After an uncomfortable encounter with Lenny she develops her film, revealing images of Horny committing the previous murders. She is chased down by the clown and ends up in the school gym, where Horny blows up her girlfriend's head in a microwave. The kill scenes are great in this film and Wikipedia did a great job of outlining them for us:

Tony - face burned by Deep Fryer
Brandon Meeks - slashed in the stomach off-screen
Brittany - axed in the head
Tiffa - killed off-screen
Val - face placed in microwave and head explodes
Lenny - hanged from the bathroom ceiling
Chad Baldwin - head decapitated
Tina McCandless - slashed numerous of time off-screen
Spany - axed in the head
Chuck Taylor - head bashed by an axe
Starfire - hand and head decapitation
Van - sliced in half by a machete
Detective Crockers - axed through the windshield of his car

The Town of Blanca Carne is soon under siege by Horny, who drops a series of terrible one-liners over noisy death metal before wielding his obviously rubber hatchet. Mackenzie's Mom is the genius that puts two and two together - remembering how her and her friends killed Archie Benjamin, the face of HellaBurger, when they were young. Archie, now resurrected as Horny, seeks revenge on the children of these guilty parents. Wow, how original . . .

The movie makes up for its awful acting and poor plot with some great humor - after discovering that Horny The Clown is really a killer, the kids claim "it's like finding out Captain Kangaroo's got pieces of Mr. Green Jeans in his freezer." And I love the TV commercials from HellaBurger that show sexy girls eating chicken wings! There's also a great cameo from Morgan Spurlock (creator of Super Size Me) who plays a HellaBurger employee. The movie is definitely in my top ten worst clown horrors of all time, and I give Drive Thru 4 toes.

http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/film/1320