Cars wrapped around trees, screaming teenagers lying on the pavement after flying through the windshield, a dead baby, and possibly the dead body of someone you know. Sound like a nightmare? No, it's a 1960s driver's' education class, and you're watching "Carrier or Killer," "Mechanized Death" or "Wheels of Tragedy."
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, one of the most notorious types of television programming for adolescents was the after-school special. Focusing on the dangers of making an immoral decision, the films were often too melodramatic to be taken seriously or deemed realistic. The makers of these types of stories were following in the footsteps of early educational films that didn't set out to educate through logic, but rather influence the moral decisions of teenagers through scare tactics and drama. The new documentary "Hell's Highway" focuses on the history and controversy of these educational films, specifically those produced by the Highway Safety Foundation, and the cult status they enjoy today.
The documentary begins with a brief history of educational films. After becoming popular during World War II as military training and factory safety films, educational films were developed for classroom instruction. Films taught high school students traffic rules, the dangers of drunk driving and eventually warned preadolescents about child molesters.
Filmmaker Bret Wood succeeds in driving home the horror and exploitive quality of these films. Just knowing that the footage in these educational films is real, that the torso hanging out of the car door was alive 10 minutes before it was filmed, is enough to make anyone squeamish. "Hell's Highway" is at its best when making this point. It also succeeds when examining the social undercurrents of the 1950s and '60s that led to these films being directed toward teenagers.
Unfortunately, the documentary gets lost when it begins to examine the controversy surrounding the Highway Safety Foundation. The interviews become too long and uninteresting, and they are unrelated to the first half of the film. Indeed, the film ends in a completely different tone and with a different focus than when it began.
"Hell's Highway" is a mediocre documentary. What makes this film worth watching, however, is the bizarre, disturbing footage of the educational films themselves that many of us have never seen.
"Hell's Highway" is playing exclusively tonight at 7 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. at the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown.
Be the first to comment on this article!