Pluskylang Great Film overall

Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

gavin6942 The small town of Paris, Australia deliberately causes car accidents, then sells/salvages all valuables from the wrecks as a means of economy.Peter Weir got the idea to make the film while driving through Europe where road signs on the main French roads diverted him into what he perceived as strange little villages. It originally started as a comedy to star Grahame Bond but later evolved. The idea of a small village thriving on an unusual and macabre economy is interesting, though I found it rather lacking in the horror category. The horror label misled me, I think.The producers unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate an American release for the film with Roger Corman after it was shown with great success at the Cannes Film Festival. What is most interesting about this is the suggestion that the film was somehow an influence on Corman's "Death Race 2000" (1975), which would have gone into production at about the time Corman saw "Cars". But it is a bit of a stretch, since "Death Race" came from a short story and was Corman's response to "Rollerball"... any Weir connection would be minor.

poe426 It seems that anyone who ventures near the town of Paris (Australia) ends up the victim of an auto accident; this, it turns out, is good for Business in the town of Paris. Coincidence? When Arthur Waldo's brother is killed in an auto accident which Arthur himself survives, the town decides to "keep" him. Arthur, it turns out, has a phobia about driving: a manslaughter charge resulted in the loss his license, and he's been unable to get behind the wheel of a car ever since. Meanwhile, other "accidents" have been occurring and the survivors given over to the local doctor, who conducts experiments on them. Among the townsfolk is the dim-witted Charlie (Bruce Spence, who played the gyro pilot in THE ROAD WARRIOR), who's eager to blow away anybody who wanders into his line of fire. He has a ghoulish collection of hood ornaments taken from the cars of his victims. When Arthur tries to leave the town, a pair of cars with engines revving menacingly bar his way. He returns to town and is told that he has "brain damage" and "a fear of cars... But that's the world we live in- the world of the motor car." If THE CARS THAT ATE Paris has one major failing, it's the lack of characterization(s): we never really get to know or care about anyone, especially our hero, Arthur. The climax deserves mention, wherein a group of ROAD WARRIORs engage in a DEATH RACE 2000 type of all-out automotive mayhem in which entire buildings are run into the ground.

Dalbert Pringle Boy, was I ever let down by this lousy, low-budget piece of Australian junk.From start to finish, this film continually struck me as being equivalent to a limp-wristed project carelessly slapped together by some incompetent, ass-backwards film students from Idiots-ville.Filled to over-flowing with lifeless, unattractive characters, rambling dialogue, terrible acting and long, "WTF?" stretches where absolutely nothing happens, The Cars That Ate Paris's title was, without question, about 10x more intriguing than was the result of its dumb and virtually humorless story.This is one of those truly grate-on-your-nerves films where right from the word "go!" one immediately senses that its scriptwriters were trying way too hard to elevate this one to the status of a bizarre & quirky "Cult" film. But, they failed miserably.I've got nothing, whatsoever, good to say about this dreary & asinine picture. Even its much-anticipated final climax (where the cars come to eat Paris) was totally anti-climatic. In fact, this finale was downright stupid.Thank goodness for the joy of fast-forwarding!

ThrownMuse The people of a small Australian village deliberately cause car accidents for out-of-towners passing through so they can profit from looting. One victim survives and the community tries to make him a member, but he unintentionally rekindles what appears to be a feud between the elders and the car-loving youths. Whoa. Huh? What? Right. The Netflix envelope said this was a satire about how much Australians are obsessed with cars (?) and a review I read implied that this film is a metaphor for New Nationalism in the 70s (??) All of that flew over my head. Still I can't say I didn't like Peter Weir's first film, and it works as a decent slow-burn horror. Also, some of the designs on the rebel youth cars were damn nifty.