The Cars That Ate Paris 4K 1974 Ultra HD 2160p

Residents of a run-down Australian town make a living by staging accidents for passing motorists and selling the wreckage for parts. They do this every day.

User Review

Movies are undoubtedly appealing in many ways—at least from my personal aesthetic perspective. First, aside from horror, I’m drawn to well-crafted post-apocalyptic stories (such as "Mad Max", "Road Warrior" by George Miller, Besson’s 1983 "The Last Battle"), and second, there’s plenty of room here for deep mystery and subtle, hidden intrigue—the kind that sends chills down your spine at the thought of an entire city conspiring against innocent visitors. And this is presented in a way that’s not as one-dimensional or predictable as, say, in "2001 Maniac" with Robert Englund or in its original. Here, evidence of the townspeople’s bloodthirstiness flits by—vaguely, ghostlike, and yet alarmingly vivid—against the backdrop of the society’s overall idyllic structure. And thirdly, the film is old, which deserves my attention simply because of its age, given my preference for such works. On top of everything else, the cast can only delight with its Australian distance from familiar faces, where each actor is largely perceived as a real person rather than a fictional character.

I’ll deliberately touch on the plot only in passing, for the viewer must experience the events as they unfold, anticipating what comes next—especially the twist and the collapse of this overreaching utopia. That’s why those unfamiliar with this film are particularly in for a treat.

After a car accident, the protagonist wanders through the city that has taken him in; he gets to know its residents and shares his fears and memories of the accident, in which he was attacked by a car weighted down with sharp spikes on its frame, its blinding headlights shining directly into his eyes from the cabin, without realizing that he had found himself right on the eve of the storm of revolution in Paris, when surrounding gangs will storm into the city, death will be everywhere, and bandaged patients will fill the streets, just like the dead in shrouds, as in Shakespeare. And the mystery of the conspiracy will be revealed…

All of this is a must-see, especially given what comes next.

It’s no coincidence that I mention the film "Mad Max", as these two works are similar not only in their filming locations, the approximate time period, and the automotive theme, but also in their depiction of a ruthless near-future world without any lasers or spaceships—a world so close to reality in its chaos and the blatant decay of its foundations, which instantly crumble following unspoken natural disasters or global economic collapses in the plot. This world isn’t yet that of *Mad Max*; there are no overtly barbaric elements here. It belongs specifically to the first part of George Miller’s trilogy—perhaps at the juncture, in the in-between. But of course, under no circumstances should Peter Weir’s *The Cars That Ate Paris* be considered part of anyone else’s work, for it is a fully-fledged, self-contained film—interesting, shimmering with the thrill of mystery, and brimming with the ecstasy of the vandal dwelling within human nature, for whom sowing chaos is far closer to the heart than preserving the remaining crumbs of the old world.

P.S.: The film’s tagline is vivid, resonant, and—I’m not afraid to say it—beautiful: “They run on blood,” just like the image of the spiked car with its victim impaled on the hood in the finale—which, by the way, also features prominently on the poster. There’s a memorable spark in them that’s hard to forget.

Info Video

Codec: HEVC / H.265 (94.4 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Info Audio

#English: FLAC 1.0
#English: FLAC 2.0
#English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
#English: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Commentary by film historian Dr Stephen Morgan)
#English: Dolby Digital 2.0 (The Guardian Interview with director/co-writer Peter Weir)

Info Subtitles