The Cars That Ate Paris

Peter Weir must have been an angry young man as his first film makes fun of every level of society. The corrupt, bumptious, mayor of the two-bit New South Wales town is the obvious fall guy, but no single character escapes Weir's wrath. You might expect the wild, local youths with their vitality to provide the film's conscience, but they are ultimately portrayed as dumb, reactionary yokels whose demise is mocked. Tellingly the film's key line, 'I can drive', is used to belittle the death of the gang member we get to know best. However, Weir goes too far by mocking the audience. Our hero is a pathetic emotional wreck who barely speaks, while many scenes are dragged out with ponderous monologues and plodding development, as if Weir is saying 'you've consumed this sort of rubbish before, now I am going to serve it up to you in a dark satire. Can you tell the difference?'. The Cars That Ate Paris is best watched with the fast forward in your hand, but do not skip the brilliant finale in which the sordid little town gets its just desserts.

One hour into this movie and I wasn't exactly sure what kind of movie it was trying to "be". It starts off as a smalltown horror mystery of sorts but Peter Weir saddles it with so much absurdist black comedy the mystery all but evaporates and we're looking at something that is more weird/awkward than mysterious/surreal, more slow-ponderous than slow-absorbing, large parts of it reminiscent of Aki Kaurismaki and his static shots, cynical humor, deadpan delivery, and smalltown squalor. By the end of it however, the movie seems to emerge as some sort of societal parable, an allegory to the repression of a close-knit society that values appearances and tradition more than anything else and which must bury secrets in its own backyard to do so, but there's so much distraction and incoherence the point is never made with any clarity or force.

At one point the score turns Morricone circa Once Upon a Time in the West and we get a showdown in the street and young men dressed with cowboy hats. We get Carmageddon-style cars circling the statue of a cannon like Comanches painted for war. We get the vague promise of a subplot about car crash survivors turned vegetables who are kept in the hospital of the small town and who later turn up in a ball masque dressed in hoods and carton boxes (a nod to Shock Corridor?), but it never goes anywhere. Peter Weir went on to make such remarkable films as Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave, and while this never reaches the hypnotic levels of those films, it's intriguing in its own quirky awkward way. It's like a movie struggling with itself, a cult classic trying to break free from the confines of a forgettable eccentricity.

The residents of a small outback town cause car crashes on it's country, hilly roads and strip all valuable parts from the vehicles to make new cars. When Arthur Waldo survives a crash that kills his brother he stays in town as he is too scared to drive. He begins to notice strange things happening around the town, with the doctor and the mayor drawing suspicion.

This is a "cult" movie. When someone tells you something is a cult movie it usually means one of two things: 1- it's a small, indie movie that people have come to discover and it's has grown gradually in success such as Reservoir Dogs (that outgrew it's cult status). Or 2- it's a movie of any size that the vast majority of people hate and a small group of fans adore. Unfortunately this is the latter. Some people will sing this things praises till the end of time but I'm afraid I don't get it. The plot seems to be going somewhere - you start off knowing very little about who's involved in the crashes and why they do it etc, along the way we get clues about experiments on humans and outsiders who live like Mad Max style scavengers, but it leaves us with no answers. The relationship between the mayor and Arthur is strange and isn't followed and I still don't see why the crashes were staged - other than to let some of the residents build a scrap yard.

The performances are sufficiently creepy to help build an air of expectation. Terry Camilleri is epically good and the wishy-washy Arthur. However they are all betrayed by a story that has nowhere to build to and nothing to say. The director also builds the tension well but with nowhere to go what could he do, it's good he's had much better material since.

Overall the film was a severe disappointment - and I wasn't expecting much from it! It's full of promise but the story dies three-quarters of the way in. The spiky beetle is very menacing and looks great but it's not enough to build a film around one cool image. OK - but don't expect any answers.

Before Peter Weir went on to make 'A' class films such as The Dead Poets Society and Witness, he had a rather unsuccessful stint as a B-movie cult flick director. Despite the fact that he's become better known for his critically acclaimed films, his lesser cult films show much more imagination and are far more fun to watch. The Cars That Ate Paris works from a delicious premise. A small township in Australia named 'Paris' causes car accidents and salvages valuables from the wreckages. The town's currency is radios, clothes etc and this lucrative business is doing well for the town. When someone survives a crash, they usually end up mentally disabled, which is good for the town as it stops them from being caught by the pesky insurance investigator. This is all well and good until George and brother Arthur drive into town. George is killed in the crash, but Arthur survives it; pretty much unharmed. Nobody has ever left Paris before, which prompts the Mayor to take the young man into his family home. This is something that will go on to have massive repercussions on the township of Paris...

Peter Weir deliciously blends several elements into the plot line. On one hand, we have the incredibly surreal idea of a whole town killing people for their valuables. This blends with the whole crazy cult idea, and this in turn mixes with the idea of the things that people will do to survive. Weir has speckled the movie with loads of great imagery, such as the old women who's job it is to take the valuables from the cars stuffing clothes down their top, and the devilish cornerstone of society, the Mayor, overseeing all the horror. Despite all the film's good elements, however, Weir has failed to make the film a complete whole. It may be down to inexperience, but while he's busy creating his atmosphere; the characters have been forgotten about, and this makes it difficult to care for them, and the story beyond an aesthetic level. There is much to like about this movie, and it's definitely worth seeing for the imagery alone; but it's hard to really love it, and that stops me from giving the film a high rating. I still recommend the movie, however, as it's well worth seeing.

A camp horror classic and Weir's feature debut. It's smart, gross, cheeky, macabre and just great.

Don't watch it if you think low budget is the same as being 'amateurish' because it's not. And if you're not used to Australian English, well, try not to panic. Doesn't matter if you don't get every word - just go with it!

This is the kind of film you don't see much any more, perhaps a product of its era. They weren't thinking much about marketing or target demographics - these filmmakers were just having a lot of fun, experimenting and coming up with something unique. Genre crossing, challenging and freaky, it also taps into some big themes about Australian identity and paranoia.