Highway 301 is an American 1950 film noir written and directed by Andrew L. Stone, and starring Steve Cochran, Virginia Grey, Gaby André and Edmon Ryan.

The film starts with comments from then-governors of North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland about how crime doesn't pay.

[1] When the film was first released, The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther caustically panned it, writing "The most disturbing and depressing of the many depressing things about the Strand's current Warner Brothers' shocker, Highway 301, is the fact that governors in Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina endorse this cheap gangster melodrama as an effective deterrent to crime.

In forewords which are personally delivered by Maryland's lame-duck Governor Lane and by Virginia's and North Carolina's Governors Battle and Scott, respectively, these eminent and honorable officials convey the solemn idea that what you are about to see is something that will prove to you how profitless crime is...However, the whole thing, concocted and directed by Andrew L. Stone, is a straight exercise in low sadism.

And the reactions at the Strand yesterday among the early audience, made up mainly of muscular youths, might have shocked and considerably embarrassed the governors mentioned above.