The Cars That Ate Paris (1974)

All I really knew about Peter Weir’s first film The Cars That Ate Paris (1974) was its memorable title and the iconic image of the VW bug covered in spikes, which was used a lot in the advertising that sold it as a genre horror film (and is even referenced in Mad Max: Fury Road). Finally watching it, I was surprised by how even with the story’s overtures towards horror that it was more eccentric and strange than the full blown genre marketing around its release made it look like. The plot: a country town in Australia called Paris fuels their local economy by luring unsuspecting motorists into death traps that make it look like a road accident to any visiting city officials. The film’s hero is Arthur Waldo (Terry Camilleri) who survives a crash that claims the life of his older brother, both of them drifters looking for work in a recession. I expected him to slowly discover the dark secret of the town and plot revenge, but in Camilleri’s performance and the writing, he is a soft-spoken, traumatised individual. In its depiction of a small rural town that prides itself on order despite the chaos it is fuelled on, the film satirises Australian politics and society, centralised in John Mellion’s deft performance as the Mayor. The film becomes more about Arthur Waldo slowly being lured into the town’s business by the promise of family and work; the inevitable tension that leads to the destructive climax is more between the older respectable guard of the town and the raging youth (led by a young Chris Haywood) who maintain the town’s borders with their ferocious looking vehicles. Plenty of recognisable Australian actors in the cast including Bruce Spence (naturally), Max Gillies and Max Phipps. The debut also points towards Weir’s later preoccupations and artful approach to subjects – evidenced by eerily beautiful sequences where damaged cars are towed in slow-motion to classical music (Bruce Smeaton did the score). It’s a quirky mash-up of horror and western genres, which are alluded to almost to the point of parody. Along with films like Wake In Fright, The Cars That Ate Paris gets to an appropriate portrait of white Australian society in that underneath a friendly demeanour lurks complete immoral colonial violence. Available to view on the Criterion Channel in the Australian New Wave section. Also, it took me half of the film to figure out that Terry Camilleri would later go on to play Napoleon in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Recommended.