The Cars That Ate Paris/The Cars That Eat People (1974) or, Small Town, Big Hell

♥♥♥

Weirdly furnished WV Beetle on the Australian poster for Peter Weir's The Cars That Ate Paris

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In the Australian outback lies the small town of Paris, where Arthur has a mysterious car accident with his brother, who perishes as a consequence. Slowly, Arthur is then incorporated into the everyday life of the small town community, which mostly spins around them getting wayward strangers to crash their cars, so that the 'good' people of Paris can steal them and the belongings of the unfortunate strangers.

 
Original and idiosyncratic, Weir proposes a mini civilization here that has somehow plummeted into a state of complete disintegration and depravity. The bizarre place that is Paris climaxes most astonishingly SPOILER in the carnival at the end, where madness streams out of the mayor, (played by John Meillon (Walkabout (1971))) and the mad doctor (played by Kevin Miles (A Cry in the Dark (1988))). 
The creeping sense of disillusion in The Cars That Ate Paris is closer to John Carpenter's Christine (1983) than to Roger Corman's Death Race 2000 (1976), which was inspired by Paris, which Corman owned a private print of, (and was thinking of distributing, which he ended up not doing, and New Line Cinema handled the American distribution instead.)
It is directed by the great Australian director Peter Weir, before he became a major movie-maker. His finest credits include Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Dead Poet's Society (1989), The Truman Show (1998) and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003). He has (it appears) ended his career now with the mildly disappointing The Way Back (2010).

In the US, the title for Peter Weir's film was altered to the less strange, yet still strange The Cars That Eat People

The long, original trailer for the film

Cost: 0.25 mil. $
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown

What do you think of The Cars That Ate Paris?
What other car movies do you know that are recommendable?