Customer Reviews

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

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Oh, the days of driver's education! What a fun experience that was, eh? A bunch of kids packed into a classroom to study the ins and outs of stop signs, speed limits, and turn signals. Those were the days. For many of us, the most memorable part of the class was the day Officer Friendly came into the classroom, set up the film/slide projector, and proceeded to show twenty or thirty minutes of good old fashioned highway carnage. Long before I sat down to enjoy such gorefests as George Romero's Dead Trilogy or any of the Friday the 13th films, I saw scenes of stomach churning violence in driver's education class. It's sort of sad to say that my class didn't watch any of the films on display in the documentary "Hell's Highway." What we did see was a state trooper come into class with a series of slides far worse than anything witnessed in this two disc DVD set dedicated to the history of safety films. Moreover, the cop in our class stood at the front of the room and fairly screamed at all of us about how we'd end up ground into pudding in a car wreck if we ever broke a traffic law. What a guy!

When I learned about Bret Wood's documentary, I knew I had to see it if only to discover the same scenes of human misery I witnessed back then made an appearance here. No such luck. We never watched "Signal 30," "Mechanized Death," or any of the other atrocities released by the Highway Safety Foundation (HSF) of Mansfield, Ohio. That's the organization behind the vast majority of traffic safety films and the focus of "Hell's Highway." According to the film, an accountant with an obsession for police work, Richard Wayman, started down the path to forming the organization way back in the 1950s. A fan of photography, Wayman arrived on the scene of a particularly destructive crash one night and offered to take pictures of the accident in order to help the police. The officer on the scene agreed, and it wasn't too long before Wayman began compiling a photographic record of horrific car wrecks. He convinced a couple of other people to help him, one of them a journalist by the name of John Dohmer, and the media picked up on their preoccupation. It was only a hop, skip, and a screech of metal on metal to throwing a film camera into the mix. Their first film, "Signal 30," came out in a few years later. Soon, the newly formed Highway Safety Foundation began sending out the film to schools across the country.

The organization grew by leaps and bounds into the 1970s with a number of new car crash films: "Mechanized Death," "Carrier or Killer," "Highways of Agony"--you get the idea. Maybe you've seen a few of these films. Death sells, and business was good in the 1950s and 1960s. To capitalize on their success, Wayman's organization began branching out into other avenues of human misery. They started making films for training police officers; films like "The Shoplifter," a really sick one about a pair of killings in Mansfield involving children, and "A Great and Honorable Duty." They also started encountering serious problems. When the Mansfield police department discovered that highly objectionable behavior was occurring in a local public restroom, the authorities brought in the HSF to capture the shenanigans with a hidden camera. Unfortunately, we see some of that footage in the documentary. More problems occurred, some of them sinister enough to catch the attention of a journalist named Martin Yant. He wrote a series of stories about financial irregularities at the Highway Safety Foundation, their failed attempt to earn money through a national telethon, and other behaviors best left unmentioned here. The organization eventually folded in the 1970s but was briefly resurrected by Earle J. Deems for a few years before disappearing forever.

An interesting and intriguing documentary, this "Hell's Highway." While I agree with the myriad claims that the structure of the presentation is a bit on the slipshod side, I don't think that takes anything away from the underlying intrigue of the whole thing. After living through the experience of watching absolutely soul shattering car wrecks, in school no less, several questions should have went through all those impressionable minds. Who the heck made these things? Why? And who thought trying to scare the living daylights out of new drivers was a good idea? "Hell's Highway" adequately addresses all of those questions. The men behind the Highway Safety Foundation genuinely seemed to care about their fellow human beings, and they cared about stopping the massive numbers of individuals dying each day on the nation's roads. It soon becomes apparent that these are not gorehounds out engaging in cheap thrills by filming bloody disasters. They believe, and that belief comes through crystal clear in the documentary, that the "scared straight" approach to traffic safety prevented deaths. And perhaps it did. We'll never know because there isn't a way to measure lives saved due to the films' influence.

Extras on the disc are well worth watching, if you can stomach them. We get outtakes and trailers on disc number one, but number two contains the real goods. "Signal 30," "Highways of Agony," and "Options to Live" appear here in their full color gory...er, I mean glory. Also included are many excerpts--most running a minute or two in length--of the other Highway Safety Foundation's films. We also get a text interview with director Bret Wood and a text history of the HSF. Many of the things you'll see on this disc are mind blasting in their brutality, but you'll gaze on this mayhem with fascination if you've sat through something similar in a driver's education class. I wonder if they're still showing this stuff today?

If you're a certain age, remember those gory films in "Driver's Ed" classes? HELL'S HIGHWAY (Kino International) is the true story of highway safety films. Two discs document the filmmakers and their grisly anecdotes, with clips from numerous flicks. Includes three uncut classics with lots of mangled teen bodies. Campy, informative and authentically horrifying.

I agree with the other reviewers that the concept behind doing this DVD was great, but the actual end product leaves a lot to be desired. Yes, the clips from the films are presented in a disjointed fashion, and the background information on the folks that pioneered Highway Safety Films was a snoozer. After I received this DVD through an online rental service I eagerly popped it into my DVD player and was initially very impressed. The menus are slickly done, and the film gets off to a good start. But about 15 minutes into it I realized that I wasn't enjoying it - and was becoming frustrated by it - for the very reasons mentioned above and in other reviews. Namely, no sooner than they started showing scenes from a film and I started getting into it they would cut back to the stodgy characters. Very bad flow and editings indeed. A much better approach in my opinion would have been to feature the uncut films as the main course, and condense all the background stories as one or more of the extras featured on disc 2. That way we could have still gotten the stories about how the Highway Safety Films got started and the background of those involved without it interfering with the enjoyment of the films themselves.

I have been waiting for this release for over a year now.I must say that I am a little disapointed.The idea behind this film is sound,and its good to see the people behind these old films,but the clips shown are in no particular order,scattered all over with very little thought behind their placement.I would have started with Signal 30 clips and then gone in chronological order with the additional scenes.It was "good" to see clips of the rare "drive and survive" and "death on the highway" though as these I have never seen before.Overall though,everyone should see this..its good information for drivers even today.Once you see some of the "reality" you will never want to be a Signal 30 yourself.Much thanks to all those behind the Highway Safety Films,and the makers of this release.

I found the narration on this to be the best part. Very creepy. It is too bad most 16 year olds are too busy drinking and driving to stop and take the time to be horrified by this.

wanted to watch this film a lot, but very disillusioned last night after doing so. the safety films themselves are gory and super interesting to watch, especially when you consider teenagers were subjected to viewing such bloody carnage, in the classroom no less....

but like another reviewer mentioned, the clips seem scattered all over the place, somewhat randomly. the interviews done with the relevant (older) characters are slow, often tedious, with unnecessary, very uninteresting info (i think a 1/3 of the film deals with where the characters came from and how they knew each other) that seems to drag on at times. the younger people interviewed were clearly more articulate and informative, but you don't feel it all clicks together in the end.

the cool bonus is disc 2 which includes 3 uncut original safety films, and other items. but the movie itself... well, i felt i was watching a classroom education film with the click click click of the projector behind me.

I have to say that I have a warm spot for these films. Before you think I am a gore hound or nutcase, allow me to explain. First as a native Ohioan, I found it very interesting that Ohio was ground zero for these movies. It also brought back memories of when I took drivers ed. at John Marshall High in 1974. I remember sitting next to this girl that I wanted to impress. During the real bloody scenes, I would pull a Three Musketers out of my lunch and make comments. I never got a date with her, wonder why? I loved the segment on the history of the company, its growth and downfall. Again, great transfer. Well worth the money.

I liked seeing the footage itself and the premise was supposed to be how driver's ed films evolved. I loved seeing the footage of old ambulances and the "emergency care" and transport of the injured. I think anyone going into EMS or police work should be required to watch. It escapes a bit from its primary goal. In fact the highway safety films remind me of a primordial version of the TV series, "Emergency!"

There is some CYA pertaining to the Highway Safety Foundation's alleged ties to criminals and pornography. Martin Yant wrote a book, "Rotten To The Core" and a sequel (came out after this documentary.) The latter book talks about Mansfield, OH's corruption- including the Highway Safety Foundation. The filmmaker tries to not get into accusing the HSF of corruption but is sucked into mentioning the accusations. He tries to be a gracious host to all those shown in this video.

Like driving by a bad car crash, it's hard to avert your eyes from this one (especially if you took driver's ed in the Sixties). . .even though you may wish you did.

It's ostensibly a documentary about the Ohio company that produced those legendary high school driving class gore-a-thons of the Sixties (complete with blood-drenched film clips and what are initially fascinating interviews with the company's few surviving associates). But formula soon becomes repetitive with same talking heads appearing again and again (admittedly unavoidable; few of the company's principals are still alive today) and eventually even the sameness of glut of gruesome wreck footage loses its impact.

Evidently realizing they're running out of gas, filmmakers flesh out last quarter of picture with interesting but unrelated tales of the company's downfall and film output unrelated to driving safety. There are unsubstaniated interviews suggesting that company was also producing porn, bizarre clips from a police shoplifting video in which women walk out of a store with meat and a shoe-polishing buffer tucked between their legs (!), animated excerpts of a 1960 educational child molestor film produced by a totally different company, a notorious clip of a stoned-looking Sonny Bono warning of the dangers of marijuana (again, not produced by Ohio company) and, even brief but shockingly graphic hidden-camera footage of actual homosexual trysts in a public toilet in Ohio. (Oh, yes, even Sammy Davis Jr. gets dragged into this mess. . . via reports of a doomed highway safety telethon doomed in part by his allegedly huge ego.)

More of a mondo hodge-podge than a straight drivers-ed movie history, this one is all over the road. But for some viewers of outre taste, getting there will be half the fun.

This video provides an interesting and balanced view of the development of highway safety films. Some of the video is difficult to watch, but the video delivers what it promises.