New Hampshire Film Festival 2008

It is not featured in any tourist books and the locals don't brag about it, but from an elevated stretch of Route 6 in rural Maine, you can see Jim 'Crash' Moreau's junk car sculpture garden. Painted red, white and blue, the 1970s sedans are frozen in action from Moreau's illustrious 40-year-plus daredevil career. 'When I die,' the aging stuntman says, 'whoever puts my obituary in the paper has to put the name 'Crash' in there or nobody would know me.'Known as the 'Maine Maniac,' Moreau is one of the last auto thrill show veterans still on the road. In the 1950s, 60s and 70s, several dozen 'Hell Driver' stunt teams crossed North America and staged auto 'accidents' for family entertainment. The most successful operation, the Joie Chitwood Thrill Show, had five daredevil units simultaneously performing at race tracks and county fairs.Hell Drivers smashed through tunnels of fire - and barreled through walls of ice. Animal rights activists be damned, they also jumped cars over circus elephants. The late Evel Knievel was inspired to jump motorcycles after a thrill show visited his hometown fair in Montana. Major car manufacturers used to compete for the advertising rights to auto thrill shows, but the lucrative sponsorships have long disappeared. A few surviving daredevils now fight to keep the tradition alive, refusing to rust away like Crash's junk car sculpture garden. Meet the last American 'Hell Drivers,' a traveling band of stuntmen who earn a living as real-life crash test dummies. At county fairs and small racetracks across the country, these gutsy characters smash school busses, mobile homes, and the occasional flaming garbage truck -- with no more protection than a motorcycle helmet and ordinary seatbelt. Harboring no dreams for Hollywood, these guys barely earn enough to fill their gas tanks. But for them, almost dying is the only way to live. Featured daredevils also include Guinness Book of World Records star Doug Danger, who has jumped his motorcycle over a jumbo jet; Michigan's second-generation 'Hell Driver' Rocky 'Hardcore' Hauri; Firewall champion Louis 'Rocket' Re and his gorilla alter-ego, King Kong Knievel.