Blood on Concrete

Just finished watching the DVD of Hell's Highway: The True Story of Highway Safety Films. This documentary deals with the making of those gory highway safety films that a generation of kids had to watch in Drivers Ed class. It was pretty good, uncomfortable viewing - although it rambled and digressed at times. Despite the title, it's really focused on the one company that produced the most widely seen films out of Mansfield, Ohio (this movie made me think twice about driving through Mansfield!). Forty-plus year later, the footage of bloody corpses in twisted metal is still shocking. But was it effective? Thankfully the film doesn't editorialize too much in that area.

One nifty extra on the DVD: the bonus disc contains three complete highway safety films and excepts from a bunch more vintage educational shorts. What stand out here is the contrast between the quaint and clumsy narrative portions and the explicit highway carnage footage, all in washed out color. DVD Savant's review goes into more detail.
Posted by mhinrichs at November 20, 2003 03:01 PM