Here on one disc are two apprentice-era offerings by Australia's most consistently successful international director, Peter Weir.
On this disc are Weir's first offering as director, 1974's The Cars That Ate Paris, clocking in at a neat 84 minutes, and The Plumber from 1978, running at an even neater 74 minutes.
Cars is an exercise in surrealistic black comedy, about a small New South Wales country town which survives on carnage. The townsfolk arrange smashes of innocent folk driving by in their Holdens, Falcons or even Jaguars. If the drivers are dead, they're buried and forgotten. If they survive, they're quickly given power-drill lobotomies and treated quite fondly as the town's vegetables.
And whatever the human result, the car-wreck result is the same. The countryfolk descend like vultures, to devour the wreck. Tyres, radios, anything that can be stripped is carried away. Even dead mens' shoes are prized in the little town of Paris.
Arthur (Terry Camilleri) is a survivor. He was in a wrecked car driven by his late brother. Arthur was barely scratched, and was not lobotomised, as the town's Mayor (played by the always-brilliant John Meillon) has taken a familial fancy to him and wants to adopt him. But he has a problem. He can't leave town because he cannot drive. His dead brother was the driver; Arthur has a phobia about driving.
But Arthur's problem is nothing compared to the problem that faces the town of Paris. Its young people are in revolt. They feel they are doing more than their fair share of arranging the wrecks the town feeds on. And they are getting almost nothing in return.
They cruise the streets in their morbid nightmare cars that have been built up from wreckage parts, resembling grotesque animals more than automobiles, and which make strange wild-animal sounds instead of the happy burble of contented exhausts.
Things are coming to a head and the cars need feeding - will Paris survive?
Back in the early 1970s this did seem a very good conceit; a nice excursion into black comedy. It's worn a bit threadbare over the years. It's still fun to watch, but the puppet strings are a bit too visible now, and by today's standards the humour is not quite black enough to sustain the movie's conceit.
The Plumber of just four years later seems a whole lot more assured. Was this drama initially made for television? The credits show it was a co-production between the South Australian Film Corporation and the Nine Network. If this was indeed a tele-drama, then television was a lot more advanced in 1978 than it is today.
This is a very well structured thriller with elements of black comedy - it's very Pinteresque in that the suspense and drama come through its words and atmosphere, not through explicit action.
Judy Morris plays Jill Cowper, who is stuck in her University flat while her husband Brian (Robert Coleby) angles for a research job with UNICEF in Geneva. There's a knock at the door - and in comes Max the plumber (Ivar Kants).
Plumbing maintenance turns into psychological and class warfare. White-collar confronting blue-collar across a chasm of sinks and sewerage. The ending is both surprising but somehow inevitable in this little bathroom-sink drama.
Although I've always had a great fondness for The Cars That Ate Paris, The Plumber is the feature here that points towards the future professionalism of the director who has given us Witness and The Truman Show - his two best films to date.
Cars is the better-known title which will sell the disc; but Plumber is the more impressive offering here.
The Cars That Ate Paris is a very respectable 2.35.1 anamorphic transfer. It seems so much improved over previous versions seen here in revival cinemas or on television that I suspect it's from the same source material as the recent director-approved Region 1 transfer from Home Vision Entertainment (also presented in a double-feature with The Plumber).
The image is quite dark at times, but never obscure enough to be worrisome. There is very little print damage evident, and while this movie is not in outstanding condition, it is the best presentation I've yet seen.
The Plumber is in a non-anamorphic 1.66.1 transfer (the Region 1 release is reported to be anamorphic) but the picture is very clean with good colour detail and strong tonal contrasts. It does seem to smack more of a television presentation than cinema in its overall quality, but it is a respectable transfer of what is now pretty historic material.
