Highways of Agony

HIGHWAYS OF AGONY is another highway horrorshow classic by the genre's founder, former accountant and crime scene buttinsky Richard Wayman (and produced by Earle Deems). Specializing in educational films targeted at teenagers and schoolchildren, Wayman's Highway Safety Films were known for their voyeuristic scenes of automotive carnage in full color along with ghoulish, almost vindictive narration (here by Wayne Byers) that seems to delight at the idea of "careless" drivers paying for their distraction with their lives. Unlike Wayman's earlier SIGNAL 30, HIGHWAYS OF AGONY features a foreboding organ soundtrack as well as brief dramatizations to set-up for scenes of unflinching roadway atrocities. Readers of Ralph Nader's UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED may note a "leading candidate for the unsafest car title" Chevrolet Corvair among the wreckages. - Tom Fritsche