Seeing the interesting and beautiful High Steel in class today reminded me of a less serious, but in its own way wonderful, film: Shake Hands with Danger (1980). It rhymes with High Steel not only because of the dangerous industrial labor depicted, but because of its repetition of a catchy country song. It's an occupational safety film (a genre, for sure) made for Caterpillar Tractor Company. Skip Elsheimer (avgeeks.com), also the popularizer of Ro-Revus Talks about Worms, has been screening this 16mm film for several years and entertaining many. Centron Corporation (1947-1981) produced many industrial and educational films. Shake Hands with Danger was one of their last. House director Herk Harvey shot this work-for-hire, but is best known to cinephiles as the auteur behind the indie cult horror film Carnival of Souls (1962). The latter is now on Criterion DVD (in its original release form and "director's cut"), but HH was still making Centron industrials twenty years after making his masterpiece. (It's a tough business, the picture racket -- especially in the middle of Kansas.)
Curiously, and I think significantly, Shake Hands with Danger is still being shown to industrial workers as a straight safety film in 2009 -- in Canada, no less. (See the comment on the Internet Archive page.)
A creative YouTuber took the theme song and made an animated version of the film.
Elsewhere on YouTube you can see and hear the anonymous voice (both singer and narrator) of SHWD, Jim Stringer, playing recent gigs in Austin, Texas.
Elsewhere on YouTube you can see and hear the anonymous voice (both singer and narrator) of SHWD, Jim Stringer, playing recent gigs in Austin, Texas.