[MOVIE]
Int.: Richard Prelinger, Mike Vraney, Earle J. Deems, John F. Butler. Scen., M.: Bret Wood. F.: Steve Anderson. Prod.: Felicia Feaster, Tommy Gibbons, Bret Wood.
Hell’s Highway: the True Story of Highway Safety Films is a morbidly curious exploration of the near-mythical driver education films shown to American schoolchildren in the 1960s and 1970s. Produced between 1959 and 1979 in Mansfield, Ohio, films such as Signal 30 (1959) encouraged safety by force-feeding high-school kids colour footage of careless driving’s dark consequences: blood-stained wreckage, injured bodies, fresh corpses. In the 1970s and 1980s, these traumatic films disappeared from the American classroom and assumed an almost legendary status. Eager to document this obscure chapter of cinema history, filmmaker and restorationist Bret Wood compiled these vanishing artefacts of grim Americana into a feature, and interviewed the filmmakers responsible for this misguided educational movement. Originally produced in 2002 in standard- definition video, this new edition of Hell’s Highway has been reconstructed through the remastering of the original 16mm interview footage, as well as new restorations of the original educational films, which appear throughout the documentary.
Courtesy of: Illustrated Films.
Restored in 2026 by Bret Wood, from the reversal 16mm A/B negatives of Mechanized Death, Wheels of Tragedy, Highways of Agony and Go, Sober and Safe preserved by Library of Congress (The Perlinger Archives). Additional 16mm negatives and composite prints scanned by A/V Geeks and Severin Films.
