Hell's Highway

Originally intended to scare teens and others into practicing safe driving techniques, this series of sometimes grainy, usually bloody, highway safety films produced by a Mansfield, Ohio volunteer group between the 1950s and 1970s, ultimately took on an artistic life of their own much like such classic cautionary fare as Reefer Madness. Filmmaker Bret Wood's documentary Hell's Highway combines pertinent clips and interviews with various experts, such as film archivist Richard Prelinger and cult video impresario Mike Vraney. Given the plethora of bloody crash aftermath scenes and heaps of mutilated corpses, one might reasonably ask why kids ever had to go to the movies to be grossed out by this sort of thing. Alas, these films were not widely available for recreational viewing…until now. I suppose viewers could learn a lot about methods of teaching highway safety or even rudimentary rescue procedures from watching this, but of course the main attraction here is the odd charm of the clumsy filmmaking, coupled with the interesting history of the group of well-intentioned citizens who originally produced these films. DVD extras on the double-disc set include three memorable specimens in their entirety (1959's “Signal 30,” 1969's “Highways of Agony,” and “Options to Live” from 1979), as well as searing excerpts from other titles such as Mechanized Death; 14 minutes of deleted scenes; and a photo gallery. Highly recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (M. Tribby)