The Cars That Ate Paris (1974)

I thought it would be wise to watch another Australian film to practice hearing the accent and seeing what other cultural tidbits I could pick up before I go on a trip to Melbourne this winter. Well. That's not what happened. I searched for a comedy and this popped up. I suppose I did laugh a couple of times, but I was never sure if I was supposed to. The cars don't eat anyone, though their leader has a mouth. They are cars so of course they run people over. But they are cars driven by people, who happen to be the town's disaffected youth. These youths don't have names or identities and are covered in dirt. We know the mayor is concerned about them as a problem because of a couple comments in his all white-male council meetings, which appear to happen daily.

The vibe is similar to M. Night Shyamalan's style of the old Murder on the Orient Express device in which the whole town (or train car) is in on the crime. The townspeople of Paris come together to cause car accidents and immediately scavenge the wreckage for valuables. They seem to use tires as currency. The town doctor does experiments on the surviving victims of these crashes. The film culminates in a costume ball held at the Paris Victory Hall, at which a pitiable woman plays the longest rendition of "Little Brown Jug" I have ever heard. The cars show up and plow into the hall, homes, businesses (etc.), generally rampaging. Finally, our protagonist (We have one! His name is Arthur.) gets behind the wheel of the car the mayor / his adoptive father (per a verbal agreement) has been driving, and with coaching from dad he smashes up an attacking car and the teen driver inside. Arthur then realizes he has conquered his fear of driving and can now escape. He promptly gets the hell out of there.

One racist "Aboriginal" sculpture is harmed in the fracas early on, for which I must deduct 1/2 of a sac of blood. 2.5 out of 5 sacs of blood.

—Krystal Languell