Ghost Rider is a US short film on bus safety, shown primarily in American schools in the 1980s. After its re-discovery on the internet in the 21st century, it has become a cult film, thanks to its unusual plotline.
Plot
After enduring his first day of junior high school, Kevin is befriended on the bus ride home by a girl who offers him a sympathetic ear, saying she knows what's it's like to be new. She drops her pencil and Kevin picks it up, only to find that the girl has vanished. Her name is inscribed on the pencil: Tracy Donnelly. While doing his homework Kevin passes his mother the pencil, and she states that the house is full of them - the Donnelly's used to live in the same house, before moving away after their daughter - Tracy - was killed in a bus accident. Kevin realizes that Tracy is a ghost, and anticipates meeting her again on the bus. Tracy is flirtatious with him, and before disappearing, gives him some homework - a bus safety manual to read. At home Kevin ignores the leaflet, so Tracy haunts him; moving his weights, changing his radio stations, and fluttering the manual until he agrees to read it, learning emergency procedures as he does so. The next time Kevin sees Tracy on the bus, she explains that she never read the bus safety manual, so she didn't know what to do save herself when there was an accident, and she warns him that he will need to know what to do soon. As she states this, one of the other students sees a pickup truck overtaking dangerously, only to meet another vehicle coming towards them. The school bus is forced off the road, knocking out the driver and sending the vehicle off the road and dangling over the edge of a cliff. Remembering what he'd read, and with some coaching from Tracy, Kevin evacuates the other students before reviving the driver and both getting off the bus, which is now empty and, with no counterweights, falls down the cliff. The other students hail Kevin as a hero, but he is concerned for Tracy, calling her name until she appears in the distance - only to wave goodbye and fade away again. Upset, Kevin is consoled and led back to the group by two of the students, one of whom was injured in the crash.
With its supernatural/love story plotline, highly unusual for a short film designed to be shown to middle and high school students, Ghost Rider has become something of a cult item in the three decades since it was made. The film gained more attention with its inclusion in the "A/V Geeks" section of the Internet Archive's Moving Pictures Archive; both star Edmunds and writer-director Ungar posted messages on the board, relaying their experiences on making the film. The movie has been downloaded from the archive over 28,000 times as of January 2019. Doug Edmunds has never appeared in another film, but he wound up in show business anyway, as a musician. He co-founded the power-pop band the Gladhands, which released three well-received albums in the 1990s, and continues to write, record and perform to this day. Edumund's latest band project is called The Stars Explode, formed in 2007.
