Director: Peter Weir
Screenplay: Peter Weir
Producers: Hal McElroy, Jim McElroy
Starring: John Meillon, Terry Camilleri, Kevin Miles
Year: 1974
Country: Australia
BBFC Certification: 15
Duration: 91 mins
Australian filmmaker Peter Weir is a director who has created some of the great films of the late twentieth century but whose name often gets overlooked. This may be because of the clear divide in his career between his early Australian works and his more widely-seen Hollywood films. Although I love films like Witness and The Truman Show, for me Weir’s Australian films are far more fascinating and have a more consistent tone and voice that felt lost in classicist Hollywood fare like Dead Poets Society. There’s an alluring sense of eerie lyricism to films like The Last Wave and Weir’s masterpiece, Picnic at Hanging Rock, which felt lost in his later work. That’s not to say I would trade in Master and Commander. I think Weir’s trajectory took him where he needed to go and produced some damn fine Hollywood fare in the process. But when I hear the name Peter Weir, it is these early films that immediately leap to mind.
This fantastic new release from the BFI offers two of Weir’s works from the period in which he established himself as one of the key voices of the Australian New Wave. The first of these, The Cars That Ate Paris, was Weir’s official cinematic feature debut (the ultra-low-budget Homesdale, a 52 minute black comedy experiment, did the rounds of festivals and film societies but was not given an official theatrical release). Although seen as an important work in establishing the Australian New Wave, The Cars That Ate Paris is often subjected to lukewarm reviews at best, its schlocky title and undefinable tone confusing and irritating as many as it amuses. The film’s low budget also leads some to suggest it is badly made. I especially take issue with this criticism, as I think that The Cars That Ate Paris is actually a rather beautiful film, its bold colour palette accentuated by this excellent restoration and its inventive visuals and performance style mining an original furrow between the artistic ambition of the New Wave and the down-and-dirty entertainments of Ozploitation. The plot of The Cars That Ate Paris certainly seems more akin to the latter: the inhabitants of the small rural Australian town of Paris orchestrate fatal car accidents for visitors who pass through, looting their belongings and taking any survivors to the local hospital where they are lobotomised and kept alive for the purposes of medical experimentation. Meanwhile, the rebellious youths of the town salvage the wrecked vehicles, modifying them into oddball death machines that terrorise the town. Arthur Waldo, a survivor of the latest “accident” that killed his brother, is spared the indignity of permanent hospitalisation when the town’s mayor takes a liking to him and decides to adopt him into his family. But first Arthur’s desire to escape Paris must be curbed, which the mayor attempts to achieve by appointing him as the town’s new parking inspector, much to the chagrin of the wayward youths.
Critics have long struggled to pin down The Cars That Ate Paris to a single generic definition. Its grotesque plot suggests a horror film but its execution veers between foreboding and wilfully silly, with a healthy dose of surrealism, satirical commentary and deliberate pacing that somehow cohere into a unique stew that frustrates many but which delighted me. Weir creates further confusion by taking brief detours into whatever stylistic cul-de-sac takes his fancy. At one point, a crucial confrontation is presented in the guise of a full-on western, complete with Ennio Morricone inspired score, which lasts all of one scene. And the film opens with a glossy parody of Australian advertising, in which a picture perfect couple wield cigarette packets and drinks cans in a conspicuous manner before their idyllic day in the country ends in abrupt annihilation. By placing this moment before the credits, Weir aims to blindside audience members who have taken it for just another pre-film advert. We never hear any more of this couple, but the anarchic tone has been set in a manner that disconcertingly invades the audience’s reality.
As with the concurrent New German Cinema, the films of the Australian New Wave have strong ties to national identity and contemporary politics, something that is often missed by those who dismiss The Cars That Ate Paris as a mere exercise in vicious grotesquerie. The various essays and extras on this set help to clarify the numerous themes and subtexts of the film, from small town fascism and the politics of complicity to the machine-dependence and Hoon culture of the Auto Age. This crucial context enhances the film considerably but there is much to admire in what Weir puts in plain view as well. The film’s steady pacing, for instance, allows viewers to take in the town and its repugnant traditions in a way that increases the immersive sense of imprisonment, as experienced vicariously through the meek protagonist Arthur. This sense of childlike bewilderment is wonderfully conveyed by Terry Camilleri, making his acting debut (he would eventually become known to a generation as the hilariously displaced Napoleon Bonaparte in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure), while the town’s overbearing ethos is perfectly encapsulated in John Meillon, whose performance as the mayor is both hilarious and disconcerting.
While it has never achieved the same acclaim as Weir’s subsequent Australian films Picnic at Hanging Rock or Gallipoli, The Cars That Ate Paris has the wonderfully freeing feel of a first film, showcasing a director trying to feel out their creative identity in a way that exposes the audience to the whole gamut of their repertoire. If later works displayed greater discipline in harnessing certain characteristics with a more consistent approach, The Cars That Ate Paris remains an invigorating cult film that will win over those with a penchant for the strange and grimly comedic.
THE PLUMBER
Director: Peter Weir
Screenplay: Peter Weir
Producers: Matt Carroll
Starring: Judy Morris, Ivar Kants, Robert Coleby
Year: 1979
Country: Australia
BBFC Certification: 12
Duration: 76 mins
Presented here as a special feature but clearly worthy of co-headline status, Peter Weir’s made-for-television film The Plumber pairs perfectly with The Cars That Ate Paris as another unconventional horror film that tempers its strong sense of unease with a large dollop of black humour. While The Cars That Ate Paris derived a lot of its comedy from the discomfort of the strange and extreme, The Plumber is often laugh out loud funny in is much more down-to-Earth depiction of skin-crawling awkwardness.
The tale of a plumber who arrives in the apartment of an anthropology student claiming he has to perform a mandatory check on the building’s pipes, The Plumber achieves its effect by tapping into the unpleasantness of having an unwanted presence in your comfort zone. It would be easy to make this story more overtly threatening by making the plumber physically or sexually inappropriate but Weir’s artful script keeps this kind of behaviour to a minimum. Instead, it trades on the destruction of smaller boundaries and the complexity of class-relations between two characters who are incompatible in just about every way. Jill, the homeowner besieged by Max the plumber’s endless, questionable renovations, is portrayed as naïve and patronising in many respects, something we see demonstrated in her discussion of her work even before the plumber arrives. We still root for her against the subtly malevolent presence that invades her space, but the battle reveals many uncomfortable truths about Jill’s prejudices as well. The climax of the story manages to combine a sense of relief and an unpleasant taste that curdles into something morally unpalatable and satisfyingly complex.
Given the size of the apartment in which it is mainly set, The Plumber is a necessarily claustrophobic film but not an uncinematic one. The themes are so rich, the performances so strong and the writing so perfectly gripping and unexpectedly absurd that the canvas feels much larger than it actually is. Judy Morris and Ivar Kants are both excellent as the leads, with her growing desperation mirroring his apparent need to get more and more inside her head. The psychological torture is superbly depicted in Weir’s script, creating a situation in which it is frustratingly believable that Jill’s husband and friend could be charmed into thinking she is overreacting, a resonant plot point for modern day audiences who are now more well-versed in the importance of believing reports of abuse. What makes The Plumber so terrifying is the seemingly arbitrary nature of Max’s campaign of terror. Although the issues of class that emerge in Max and Jill’s battle assuredly ramp up the situation, Max has seemingly no motivation at the outset beyond a possible overarching bitterness towards an entire portion of society. Such questions are kept satisfyingly ambiguous without being frustratingly vague. The driving forces behind the ongoing tension are clear enough that Weir found viewers often sided against Jill if they shared Max’s broader outlook, despite his obvious overstepping.
The Plumber is about as brilliant a special feature as you could hope for and, for me, it is up there with Weir’s finest films and the greatest TV movies ever made. Although amusingly, as revealed in one of this disc’s interviews, this was not a sentiment shared by the plumber who worked on Weir’s own house, who discovered the film a couple of days into the job and was never quite the same with Weir after that!
The Cars That Ate Paris is released by the BFI on Blu-ray and 4K UHD on 22 May 2026. The extras package here is exceptional. Not content with offering an entire bonus feature length film, we are also treated to two early short films by Weir which, while rather obscure, give an interesting insight into his development as a director. There are numerous insightful interviews with Weir, including a 70 minute career interview with The Guardian which was recorded in 1985. I also greatly enjoyed the 20 minutes interview with the elderly Terry Camilleri, who exudes the same sweet timidity that made his performance in The Cars That Ate Paris so endearing. As a huge fan of Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, I was also delighted by Dream Within a Dream, a short film assembled from newly discovered outtakes from that film.
The full list of special features is as follows:
* Newly recorded audio commentary on The Cars That Ate Paris by Dr Stephen Morgan
* My First Film: Terry Camilleri on The Cars That Ate Paris (2026): newly recorded interview with one of the stars of the film
* Interview with Peter Weir – The Cars That Ate Paris(2003, 11 mins): archive interview with the director
* Guardian Interview: Peter Weir (1985, 70 mins, audio only) extensive interview with the acclaimed director, recorded around the release of Peter Weir’s Oscar-winning film Witness
* 3 To Go: Michael (1970, 31 mins): three young filmmakers, of whom Peter Weir was one, were commissioned by the Australian Commonwealth Film Unit to each write and direct a half-hour fiction drama on the theme of ‘Youth’. These were combined for cinema release as 3 To Go. Michael was Weir’s contribution to the project
* ‘Nobody Leaves Paris! No One!’ (2026, 15 mins): a newly commissioned video essay by Chris O’Neill looking at The Cars That Ate Paris
* Interview with Hal McElroy (2008, 6 mins): an interview with the one of the producers of The Cars That Ate Paris, originally recorded by filmmaker Mark Hartley for his documentary Not Quite Hollywood
* The Plumber (1979, 77 mins): remastered in 2K, Peter Weir’s made-for-television thriller follows an anthropology student and her husband whose lives are disrupted when an over familiar plumber begins intrusive ‘repairs’
* Newly recorded audio commentary on The Plumberby Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Josh Nelson
* Incredible Floridas (1972, 13 mins): a portrait of Australian composer Richard Meale
* Interview with Peter Weir – The Plumber (2003, 8 mins): archive interview with the director
* Peter Weir’s Dream within a Dream (2026, 18 mins): sparked by the discovery of rare outtakes from Picnic at Hanging Rock, this newly made work by Polish filmmaker Jakub Duszynski offers new insight into Weir’s 1975 masterpiece
* Trailers
* Image galleries
* Illustrated booklet featuring a new written interview with Peter Weir, an original review, essays on The Cars That Ate Paris by Dr Stephen Morgan and on The Plumber by Tara Judah and writing about his short films by Peter Weir