Reviewed by Neil Davey
Stars Terry Camilleri, John Meillon, Kevin Miles, Rick Scully, Max Gillies, Danny Adcock,
Bruce Spence, Kevin Golsby | Written by Peter Weir, from a story by Peter Weir, Keith Gow & Piers Davies
UK certification 15 | UK RRP £15.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 84 minutes | Directed by Peter Weir
On a good day, Peter Weir is one of the best directors in the world. There's many a bigger name who'd like to have Picnic At Hanging Rock, Witness, The Year of Living Dangerously and Dead Poets Society on their CV. However, even hugely talented directors have to start somewhere which is where the more-than-a-little-odd The Cars That Ate Paris comes in.
Made in 1974, Cars... sits in an interesting position in Weir's own CV. It's just before the ethereally spooky Picnic At Hanging Rock but around the same time that he was a writer on Australia's The Aunty Jack Show, a truly bizarre, but often very funny, comedy. Think Goodies meets Spike Milligan's Q in Monty Python's dressing room, and you'll be somewhere in the ballpark. Accordingly, this brutal satire has a brooding creepiness and a deep vein of black humour running through it.
Paris is a backwater Aussie town that doesn't so much eat cars as thrive on them. The town's economy is based on cars stolen in staged accidents from unfortunate passers-by, most of whom are either dead or brain damaged. A rare survivor is Arthur (Camilleri – and in case you do the 'what have I seen him in before?' thing, he was Napoleon in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure!). Arthur and his brother have been run off the road. The brother, George (Scully), is dead. Arthur, however, is very much alive and is taken under the wing of the mayor (Meillon, Crocodile Dundee's Walt). Arthur soon realises that Paris is a very strange town indeed, with the streets taken over by the town's youth at night in their extreme customised cars, the town actively mudering people for their wheels and the doctor performing illegal experiments on his brain-damaged captives: the 'veggies' as town-dialect knows them. Ultimately, Arthur's arrival provides the catalyst that ignites the cross-generation feud that's been brewing for years.
The hint of great things to come is probably the main reason to watch this early Weir, although it's not without its moments and once you get behind that off-kilter facade, there's a fine line in macabre humour. If your previous experience of this film was under the name The Cars That Ate People, don't panic. That was the 74 minute hacked about US version. This full version is still somewhat esoteric (he says euphemistically) but the extra 10 minutes make a lot of difference.
EXTRAS * Scene selection...