The Five Weirdest Forgotten Classics Of Australian Cinema
When we do weird, we do pretty bloody weird.
The Five Weirdest Forgotten Classics Of Australian Cinema
Amid the fierceness of the Mad Max: Fury Road trailer that dropped a couple of weeks ago, film obsessives would have spotted a sweet Australian cinema reference: a silver, psychotic, spiky echidna car, speeding along impaling soft bodies in the desert. That freaky, beautiful instance of cinematic design appeared originally in The Cars That Ate Paris, an early, oft-forgotten classic of Australian cinema that marked Peter Weir’s debut. Nice reference, George Miller.
The wide misconception of Australian film is that it’s mostly dark, documentary-style, greyscale tales. That’s sad, considering the depth and breadth of sheer crazy brilliance that Australian cinema has to offer. It’s a strange historical accident that as Mad Max went on to gain global fame and three sequels (so far), a raft of equally amazing films were left behind. Here are some of Australia’s best weird films, and the stories behind them.
Words by Lauren Carroll Harris.