BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Bluebell Alcock Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

dbborroughs This is a 90 minute documentary about the Highway Safety Institutes Driver's Ed shock films. Its a graphic trip down memory lane to a time and place that many of us never experienced and only heard about.Hell's Highway is the story of the company that produced educational films for schools and institutions from the late 1950's until the 1980's. The Highway Safety Institute was borne of the idea that if people saw the horrors of traffic accidents they would drive more carefully. The film makers went out and filmed the aftermath of terrible accidents where the broke bodies were removed from the wreck cars for years. The film they shot ended up in dozens of films that grossed out generations of school kids.This documentary is an interesting look at the people who went out and filmed the carnage. We get interviews with the film makers, police, and people who saw the films in addition to clips from the films themselves. Its a visceral experience that leaves you feeling a bit uneasy. Several clips are more shocking in the documentary than they probably are in the source films because you get the stories behind the footage which makes them more heartbreaking and gruesome.The film however suffers from over length. Running some 90 minutes the film begins to feel pointless about half way in, as the film makers seem intent of telling you everything about the company that made these films (including rumors of porn films). Its not bad, its simply that after a while the interest begins to wane as the film goes into all of the other films that the company made. While not fatal I did find that I was stopping the film to do other things simply because I was losing interest.If you are interested in seeing a rapidly disappearing slice of Americana I recommend you take the time and see this film. Its an informative (if gory) look into the past. Also if you saw any of these films as a teenager this is the perfect way of re-seeing the movies that probably haunted your nightmares for weeks afterward.(And if you're really interested get your hands on the DVD which comes with a second disc with four or five complete films and clips from probably two dozen more)

shaffreytm I was shown one of these scare films in the mid-80s and believe they are enormously effective. This documentary is about a fascinating topic, but it's point of view promotes the idea that the films don't work. I could not disagree more. After seeing the real result of speeding, or going through a stop sign in one of these films in a high school driver's ed class I drove MUCH more carefully as a teenager. Those bloody corpses smashed into the windshield are so disgusting I believe I'm still the cautious driver I am today because of them. THE TACTIC WORKS. We live in an era when corporate media and the government believe the public is too queasy to see our war dead from Iraq. And those are just coffins! The more informed we are about the real consequences of our actions the better off we are.

Baron3000 "Hell's Highway" is a documentary focusing on the men who created the now-infamous highway safety films of the mid-twentieth century, in particular those involved with the Highway Safety Foundation (HSF) during its life as a procurer of the macabre as an educational tool. The film's director, Bret Wood, manages to capture the audience's interest without ever guiding their thoughts or beliefs towards a discernible argument or standpoint. We as an audience are never led to think or feel in a certain way about the film's subject, a characteristic that will be lauded by some and looked down upon by others. While the neutral position taken by Wood may seem like a noble endeavor, it unfortunately causes the documentary to be hollow at its center, and the viewer is left to feel that the only reason he or she is watching it is to see the usually shocking safety films contained within. Doc lovers will probably recognize the lack of form that this hollowness forces upon the film, causing it to not live up to expectations, while the casual viewer may find greater entertainment value in it, but will more than likely still recognize the empty space at the film's core.Another flaw of this film is its over-reliance on clips from the actual highway safety films produced by the HSF and its lack of supporting evidence and arguments from interviews. The interviewees seem like they have a lot to say, but are never given the opportunity to fully express their ideas and thoughts behind the making of the safety films. Instead, Wood inserts usually the most shocking scenes from the films being mentioned for sheer entertainment purposes, as if he were afraid that the audience would lose interest in the doc's subject matter.In addition to this, the film suffers from being overly-long and drawn out. At a running time of approximately ninety minutes, this film sets out to stretch a subject a little too thinly over a lengthy period of time. It is more than likely due to Wood's hesitance to take a stance on his subject that causes the film to seem extended beyond its limits. One cannot help but wondering what the film would be like if it followed a more rhetorical or dramatic arc, rather than focusing on interview footage that has a tendency to beat around the bush, so to speak. The film's final third suffers the most from this forced extension of time and topic as it skews into mentioning the other safety films produced by the HSF as it began to expand that had little or nothing to do with automobile accidents or cautions. The section on the HSF's rumored involvement with pornographic films seems like a complete digression and an ignorance of the doc's central idea and topic. And while the safety films dealing with shoplifters, child molesters, and the like are interesting in their own right, their presence in the film as a whole seems awkward and out of place.Overall, this is an interesting film dealing with an extremely interesting subject. Its untraditional and neutral approach to its subject is a detriment, though, as is its overly-long running time. As a documentary, it succeeds on some levels but fails on more, but as an opportunity to see some of the most shocking and amazing highway safety films ever produced, it will definitely not disappoint.

aaronas HH charts the course of the company "Highway Safety Films" and their quest to make America's roads safer at the same time as they turn a profit. This documentary highlights gore of the original movies as well as the fact that this gore did little more than emotionally scar millions of impressionable youth.HH also explores some of the underbelly of the company including allegations that the company made pornos on the Highway Safety Film Tour Bus. Unfortunately, these tangents are more interesting than the original subject matter and these tangents are left undeveloped.