Highways Of Agony is a 1969 Scare 'Em Straight driver's education film depicting the tragic outcomes of actual car accidents.
Another of the many "shock-and-gore" films filmed in cooperation with the Ohio State Patrol, this movie – like its ancestors Signal 30 (1959) and Wheels of Tragedy (1963) – focuses on mainly reckless driving and disregard for traffic laws and the accidents and death that resulted. Each accident is described in graphic detail.
The point of Highways Of Agony was to stress to teenage drivers that one instance of failing to obey a traffic law, a decision to drive too fast, an instant of carelessness or recklessness can be deadly ... and not just in a clean, bloodless death sense. Like other films produced by the Ohio State Patrol, actual file footage of accident scenes, along with bodies mangled and bloodied beyond recognition, are used (although the events leading up to these tragedies are dramatized and re-enacted), this possible in an era long before privacy laws (such as HIPAA) were enacted.
Highways Of Agony remained a staple of many driver's education classes well into the 1980s, the movie and its ancestors each aimed at instilling safe driving habits in young teenagers who otherwise would be tempted to break every traffic law on the books. Other similar films included Red Asphalt, Mechanized Death, Options to Live and many others. All with the same lesson in mind: If you don't follow traffic and safety laws all of the time behind the wheel... well, take a look at what might happen.
Tropes associated with Highways Of Agony:
- Bloodless Carnage: Very much a no-no here. After all, what good would a Scare 'Em Straight driver's education film be without it?
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Lots of graphic descriptions on injuries suffered, and lots of blood and gore as screaming accident victims take their last breaths. Perhaps some of these were even more graphic than the Ohio State Patrol's previous films.
- Dies Wide Open: One particularly graphic scene shows the mangled bodies of three young accident victims of a car-train collision.
- Man on Fire: Another especially graphic scene shows the remains of two elderly people, killed when they were trapped in their burning car. (Their bodies were burned beyond recognition and only a charred driver's license helped identify them.)
- Ominous Pipe Organ: Accompanies the most gruesome scenes, including the finale. Notably, this film is one of the few Highway Safety Foundation productions to include an original score rather than using stock music.
- Railroad Tracks of Doom: A scene whose aftermath is not for the faint of heart. (The driver – likely during a night of drinking – decides to race a train to the crossing; he and his two passengers are killed outright.)
- Tonight, Someone Dies: The warning at the beginning of the film. Let's just say you were warned.
