The first feature by Peter Weir, the young Australian who went on to make Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave, The Cars That Ate People is a skillfully crafted, low-budget horror film that is set in an outback town called Paris. It gradually becomes apparent - at first to the sole survivor of a car crash in Paris - that the town lives from traffic accidents induced by the local citizenry. The delinquent younger generation terrorize the streets in cars built from the relics of auto wrecks. Spare parts and scrap metal provide the older generation with their only source of revenue.