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.
3 Reviews
A powerful lesson
dtucker868 May 2024
Warning: Spoilers
Tom Schulman wrote the screenplays for What About Bob? Dead Poets Society and Honey I Shrunk The Kids. He got his start at the typewriter doing this little 1976 film with a big message that is still just as crucial today because kids are as irresponsible as ever when it comes to driving. There is drinking and driving and texting and driving and in this film it is auto theft and joy riding. This film is so 1970s. People leave theiir keys in the ignition and don't even bother to put on seat belts! Two Beavis and Butthead teenage boys steal a friends car and decide to go on a "joy ride". Of course it doesn't matter to them that they don't even have a license. To make matters worse they get two girls to go with them. The girls have doubts when they ask them to get in and you hope they make the right decision but no such luck. These kids are so dumb and immature you really don't particularly care about them or feel bad about their tragic fate in the end. They are being pursued by the police and end up crashing the car. The credits at the end mention this is based on a real life event and three of the kids were killed while the lone survivor was paralyzed for life. Play stupid games win stupid prizes people its as simple as that!
Entertaining Educational Film
Michael_Elliott27 April 2018
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.
*** (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.
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