The Cars That Ate Paris - 1974

This is no City of Light, it's more like the City of Brutal Car Wrecks.

I am not sure how to label this one, black comedy, satire, grindhouse, western deconstruction, horror... it is a bit of each. It was directed by Peter Weir (Dead Poets Society and Master & Commander) in 1974. This came around the time of other doom car movies like "Mad Max" and "Death Race 2000"

It opens with an idyllic couple smoking alpines and drinking coca-cola taking a nice drive in the country. Without warning a wheel falls off their car and they drive off the road and die, not unlike the ending of a Toonces skit. The next scene threatens to greet two more passengers with the same fate, but Arthur, our protagonist is spared. He wakes up in the small Australian town of Paris where he is adopted but the town mayor. Arthur, now terrified of driving due to the accident (and a sinister post accident trauma test), tries to leave via car and by foot. These attempts prove unsuccessful so eventually he gives in and stays in town.

The town residents include a mad surgeon, the youth (they are referred to as youth but look like they are in their mid to late twenties) that modify cars into death machines, and a group of lobotomized hospital patients. Turns out the town has a hobby of killing motorists, stripping their cars and using any possible survivors as science experiments.

The car crashes at the beginning of the movie offer a bit of action, but the bulk of the movie finds Arthur slowly discovering that this town is not what it seems, slow plodding eerie revelations to Paris' dark secrets. And then the ending happens.

There was a dispute between the Youth and the rest of the town folk which results in the burning of one of the souped up car/death machines. Retaliation happens at a bizarre town dance that seems like a scene used as the basis of a future David Lynch movie. The Youth attack killing a few townsfolk but themselves dying in the process. People are impaled on car spikes, others are repeatedly rammed with a car, a pretty bloody climax for the movie.

The attack forces Arthur to seek shelter and defend himself with a car which rids his fear of driving. After the attack Arthur leaves Paris for good. A rite of passage similar to Peckinpah's "Straw Dogs" but less misogynistic and infinitely more enjoyable.