Hell's Highway: The True Story of Highway Safety Films

There's nothing cliché, or square, when it comes to waking people up. If you tell a teenager "DON'T Do IT", they probably will for the thrill of it. More people have died each year of car accidents than pandemics. So the idea of speaking to young or old driver's is preachy, and a waste of time is naïve. The automobile has been around since the early 1900's and the 1950's blossomed stupid "rebel without a cause" spoiled teenager movies, like Brando, the wild one. Something was desperately needed to SCARE the Hell out of people in general from driving like jackasses. These films like Signal 30, or blood on the highway was what was needed at the time. People today are just as stupid driving while texting. Its no better today, just more air-bags to combat the air-heads behind the wheel.

The only reason to watch this is to see clips from the old safety films and there are lots of them. They try to make fake drama about how HSF ended and it's lame. At least it wasn't boring.

HH charts the course of the company "Highway Safety Films" and their quest to make America's roads safer at the same time as they turn a profit. This documentary highlights gore of the original movies as well as the fact that this gore did little more than emotionally scar millions of impressionable youth.

HH also explores some of the underbelly of the company including allegations that the company made pornos on the Highway Safety Film Tour Bus. Unfortunately, these tangents are more interesting than the original subject matter and these tangents are left undeveloped.

This is a 90 minute documentary about the Highway Safety Institutes Driver's Ed shock films. Its a graphic trip down memory lane to a time and place that many of us never experienced and only heard about.

Hell's Highway is the story of the company that produced educational films for schools and institutions from the late 1950's until the 1980's. The Highway Safety Institute was borne of the idea that if people saw the horrors of traffic accidents they would drive more carefully. The film makers went out and filmed the aftermath of terrible accidents where the broke bodies were removed from the wreck cars for years. The film they shot ended up in dozens of films that grossed out generations of school kids.

This documentary is an interesting look at the people who went out and filmed the carnage. We get interviews with the film makers, police, and people who saw the films in addition to clips from the films themselves. Its a visceral experience that leaves you feeling a bit uneasy. Several clips are more shocking in the documentary than they probably are in the source films because you get the stories behind the footage which makes them more heartbreaking and gruesome.

The film however suffers from over length. Running some 90 minutes the film begins to feel pointless about half way in, as the film makers seem intent of telling you everything about the company that made these films (including rumors of porn films). Its not bad, its simply that after a while the interest begins to wane as the film goes into all of the other films that the company made. While not fatal I did find that I was stopping the film to do other things simply because I was losing interest.

If you are interested in seeing a rapidly disappearing slice of Americana I recommend you take the time and see this film. Its an informative (if gory) look into the past. Also if you saw any of these films as a teenager this is the perfect way of re-seeing the movies that probably haunted your nightmares for weeks afterward.

(And if you're really interested get your hands on the DVD which comes with a second disc with four or five complete films and clips from probably two dozen more)

HELL'S HIGHWAY is a documentary about those educational / safety films that flickered in many a darkened classroom of yesteryear. The best of these films were the "Driver's Ed." movies. Hyper-dramatic, preachy, and, in retrospect, extremely entertaining, these moralistic tales are very watchable today.

The concept of "Teenicide": the idea that teens are just an accident waiting to happen, is as hilarious today as it was serious way back when.

The switch from the early, choreographed films to those containing actual car accident footage is chronicled. The shocking images are discussed, as well as their impact and the reasoning behind them. The ghoulish nature of the films, the filmmakers, and those creepy narrators are also examined.

Though the movies themselves were / are exploitative and manipulative, this documentary is quite informative. It even explores the Highway Safety Foundation, its alleged connections to pornography, and a murder mystery involving one of its photographers!

In addition, there's an interesting segment featuring none other than Jimmy Hoffa!

Plus, the company's most controversial films about homosexual encounters and child molestation, the latter of which traumatized many an elementary school student!

An educational, entertaining investigation into these short films...