the cars that ate paris (cinema history class)

Session: Australian Horror/Sci-Fi, week 3
Movie: The Cars That Ate Paris  (1974)

Plot:
Driving through the Australian countryside at night, Arthur and his brother George are in a horrible car accident near the rural town of Paris. Arthur awakens in the local hospital. As he recovers and acquaints himself with the town, he finds that not all is as it initially appears. And they won't let him leave. Hilarity ensues.

Class Reaction:
As a group we really didn't know what to make of this movie. Not that it was bad, but it was strange. The characters' odd demeanor, the strange story... Joe gave it a 7, which may seem good, but according to his scale, movies of this genre start at a 9. Keith explained to us that Peter Weir approached this a s a black comedy, but -- save for one or two moments -- we failed to see the humor. We were unanimous in appreciating the scenes that paid homage to Spaghetti Westerns. And Dave nailed it when he said that it was a biker flick with cars.

My Thoughts:
I was actually looking forward to this movie. Decades ago, when I was in high school I rented it and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes*. It had been released in the US as The Cars That Eat People, and I chose it based on that screaming title. It wasn't what I expected. I have no memory of that early viewing, save for some isolated images of cars in the forest. When Keith announced his itinerary for the month of Australian movies, I was looking forward to seeing what it was I had missed.

Like the rest of the class, I was flummoxed. When it came time to rate it, I explained that I had no way of placinfg it in a normal scale from 1 to 10. So I rated it a 3+4i. The climactic scene, with the altered cars, made the film. Without that, I might have only rated it a 1+4i.

The characters are thin and undeveloped, which kind of left me free to impose whatever conceits I liked, which was kind of helpful. But it was hard to really care about any of them. No one was likeable. No one was good. But, despite  being undeveloped, they could be interesting. The Pioneer Ball scene is, itself, a work of art.

It was easy to see how this led to the Mad Max movies -- which Weir also directed -- and Death Race 2000, which was directly inspired by it.

A day later, I'm still not sure what to think of the movie, but I have to admit that I liked it.

The Cars That Ate Paris fails the Bechdel Test.

*At the time, I loved Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, but in the intervening years I have come to loathe it. It's self-conscious style and purposeful badness just grate on me. Real kitsch has to happen organically, and AofKT tries too hard to force it.