12 Movie Openings That Totally Trolled Audiences
2. The Cars That Ate Paris
Directed by The Truman Show helmer Peter Weir, 1974’s indie horror comedy The Cars That Ate Paris is a nightmarish slice of Lynchian creepiness from the director's pre-fame period which concerns a small town who make a living off the many vehicular manslaughters which occur within its borders.
The filmmaker's unsettling debut opens as it means to go on, wrong-footing an unsuspecting audience and ensuring they have no idea what's coming next.
The film's first scene is shot on an idyllic country road, following an attractive young couple on a quiet afternoon drive. The sequence is shot in the style of a glitzy television advertisement so that cinema patrons would mistake it for another cigarette ad before the movie began.
Then the opening sequence soon takes a dark turn, shocking cinema patrons as the duo's smiles falter and the sequence ends with a grisly car crash.
Smoking kills, kids.