The Cars That Ate Paris

A bone-dry comedy that only manages the lightest bit of snooping around when considering the real malevolence lurking beneath its callous, central premise. The Cars That Ate Paris, from writer-director Peter Weir, opens with the kind of aggressively idyllic scene typical of advertising: a good-looking couple speed around in their Datsun, smoking Alpine cigarettes and drinking Coca-Cola. Branding fills the frame, calling attention to itself. Is this part of the feature? Before long though the driver runs out of hands to comfortably juggle these commercial considerations. A wheel comes off. The driver loses control of the vehicle. The duo hurtle away from the dirt track road, their car crumpling and rolling in such a way that there's little doubt that these photogenic, would-be stars are now dead. Eventually, we learn that this was no accident. That the residents of a remote, dilapidated Australian town called Paris run their economy, and get their jollies, from arranging these kind of 'accidents'. 

Our guide through Cars is Terrance Camilleri (a Maltese-born actor who would go on to play Napoleon in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure)'s Arthur, a softly-spoken fella who is himself a victim of these crimes. His passivity radiates out into the film, slowing events to a crawl to match his own lack of resistance. Perhaps because he is so unthreatening and ineffectual, the townsfolk forgo the drill-bit lobotomy they usually dole out to survivors and allow Arthur to roam around as an adoptee. Eventually, following a few fruitless idles around a decommissioned bus stop, a Parisian played by Bruce Spence greedily oversteps when claiming a ride. In the panic the townsfolk turn on each other. Battle lines are drawn between the middle-aged murderers, who demand a certain level of prim propriety be maintained, and the young punks who rebuild the wrecks Paris accrues. Left to their own devices, these bored youths cover their cars in porcupine bristles or swastikas and sauvastikas, before crashing them into each other. Once angered, they retaliate by driving through private premises. Arthur's role in the resulting carnage isn't at all heroic but it is transformative: the whispering amaxophobic overcomes his fear of driving by repeatedly crashing the sharp point of a Chrysler tailfin into the head of a stunned, bleeding teen.