The Cars That Ate Paris (1974)

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1. 

   Siskoid

   I wish I liked The Cars That Ate Paris more than I do. After all, this little Australian picture has a great premise. A small town called Paris lives off the car accidents it causes, with creepy results. It's interesting to see how their home-grown economy works, and the sad sack protagonist, who has a fear of driving ever since he committed vehicular manslaughter years ago, makes for a good, if passive, point of view character to tell the story. The car fetishism prevalent in the film is also a good metaphor for his phobia and possibility of overcoming it. And there's a cool car attack in the third act, with colorful killer cars that may or may not have inspired Mad Max down the road (ha!). But it fails to gel together for me. Director Peter Weir would go on to do bigger and better things, but here his narrative feels disjointed, like he's trying to tell a story about a place, and is just shuffling his hero along from one set piece to another to reveal the bigger picture. We're still left with a lot of unexplained shenanigans, and perhaps it's just supposed to be the hero's psyche trying to repair itself after a trauma, but I don't know that that's altogether clear. 4 years 10 months ago
2. 

   ClassicLady

   Nothing funny here. 10 years 5 months ago
3. 

   mathiasa

   Why doesn't it have a Western, Film-Noir or
   Musical tag? 10 years 3 months ago

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