As the 1950s drew to a close, high school hygiene films and VD cautionary tales gave birth to another, far more graphic sort of fear-inducing curriculum: the driver's-ed movie. Bearing such titles as Signal 30, The Third Killer, Wheels of Tragedy, and Highways of Agony, these films -- usually produced by the Highway Safety Foundation -- intercut staged, fictional tales of impudent hot-rodders and drunk-driving, non-safety-belt-wearing teens with actual accident footage. Director Bret Wood
chronicles the history of this grisly subgenre with Hell's Highway, a documentary that details the growing need for teen-cautionary films in the late-'50s/early-'60s and the man who fulfilled it, Richard Wayman. Wayman, Wood learns, was an armchair policeman who liked to drop in on the scenes of various crimes, taking snapshots and other amateur-forensics data. He turned his hobby into a profession, however, when he hooked up with another accident-obsessive, Phyllis Vaughn, her sister, and a newspaper photographer. Pitching their idea to the Ohio Highway Patrol, the foursome went around to give lectures and slideshows to high schools; as their revenues and budgets grew, they began pre-packaging their worst-case driver scenarios in short films that were distributed nationwide throughout the '60s and '70s. ~ Michael Hastings, Rovi
Someday, perhaps, someone will make a documentary of Volvo commercials and Consumers Union test-drive videos, but I doubt it will be as unnerving -- or as much fun -- as Hell's Highway.
The real highlights in Hell's Highway are the driver's ed scare films themselves, and [director] Wood has presented a generous sampling of often flabbergasting clips.
How effective were the highway safety films in stopping accidents? Opinions differ. How effective is Hell's Highway in curing you of ever wanting to see another one? Completely.
Ephemeral films expert Rick Prelinger is on hand to situate the films in a larger cultural context but the clips speak louder than any interview, evoking a pre-seatbelt era of highway carnage and celluloid tough love.
Gory! Luckily I was too young to see these films because I know I would have been severely scarred. But I did love those cars we sat in for driver's ed training. Little did I know my school was just poor and had never bought new equipment. Ha!
August 21, 2008
Jessica Reed
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