Joy Ride: An Auto Theft

Joy Ride: An Auto Theft (1976)

*** (out of 4)

Two boys are sitting around bored and wishing they had a car. They then notice that the cool guy in town has left his keys in his car so they decide to take it for a joy ride. After picking up a couple ladies they head out for some fun but that doesn't last long.

The educational film genre was pretty much dying down during the 1970s but this one here managed to get out there and it turned out to be a fairly entertaining one. The film has some weak performances as you'd expect but I thought the film did an excellent job at making you like the characters and having fun with what they were doing. The film perfectly sets you up for what you know is going to happen at the end but if you enjoy these educational scare films then this one here is worth watching.

At 13 minutes, this short is a predictable and fairly amateurish "crime never pays" morality tale, but it does pack a punch, particularly at the end. The acting is pure 70s novice, but one of the girlfriend actors freaks out pretty effectively as the joyride slowly morphs into a death march into the side of a mountain. If you saw this in school, I bet you remember it (I haven't seen it in 27 years but it has stayed with me for some reason). Not as gory as the DEATH ON THE HIGHWAY or FACES OF DEATH series, this is still clearly intended to scare kids into good road behavior. I don't know if it curbed car theft but it probably did decrease some children's desire to be in cars going around sharp mountain turns.