Release
The producers unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate an American release for the film with Roger Corman after it was shown with great success at the Cannes film festival. Shortly afterwards Corman recruited Paul Bartel to direct his Death Race 2000; Bartel hadn't seen The Cars That Ate Paris but he was aware that Corman had a print of the film.
The movie struggled to find an audience in Australia, changing distributors and with an ad campaign unsure whether to pitch it as a horror film or art film. However it has become a cult film. In 1980, $112,500 had been returned to the producers. It received an American release in 1976 by New Line Cinema under the title The Cars That Eat People with added on narration and other differences.
In 1992, it was adapted as a Music-Theatre work by Chamber Made Opera.
The film currently holds a 57% 'Rotten' rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Read more about this topic: The Cars That Ate Paris
Famous quotes containing the word release:
“As nature requires whirlwinds and cyclones to release its excessive force in a violent revolt against its own existence, so the spirit requires a demonic human being from time to time whose excessive strength rebels against the community of thought and the monotony of morality ... only by looking at those beyond its limits does humanity come to know its own utmost limits.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“The steel decks rock with the lightning shock, and shake with the
great recoil,
And the sea grows red with the blood of the dead and reaches for his spoil—
But not till the foe has gone below or turns his prow and runs,
Shall the voice of peace bring sweet release to the men behind the
guns!”
—John Jerome Rooney (1866–1934)