Sunday Docs
Directed by Bret Wood
With Sonny Bono, Richard Prelinger, Mike Vraney
Not Rated, 91 minutes, DCP
Critically-acclaimed upon its 2003 theatrical release, Hell's Highway: The True Story of Highway Safety Films is a morbidly curious exploration of the shocking driver education films of yesteryear. Produced between 1959 and 1979 in Mansfield, Ohio, films such as Signal 30 went the scared straight route and encouraged safety by force-feeding high school kids color footage of careless driving's dark consequences: blood-stained wreckage, injured bodies, fresh corpses. In the 1970s and '80s, these traumatic films disappeared from the American classroom and assumed an almost mythical status. Hell's Highway unearths these artifacts of grim Americana and interviews the filmmakers responsible for this radical educational movement. This remastered edition includes three complete "blood-on-the-highway" films, newly restored from the original 16mm camera elements preserved in the Richard Prelinger Collection at the Library of Congress.