Watched: 04/25/2026
Format: Criterion
Viewing: First
Director: Timothy Carey
I am unclear on the release history of The World's Greatest Sinner (1962). I'm not even sure it ever did more than a screening or two in Los Angeles and then disappeared. I don't know how it hit streaming, winding up (til the end of the month) of the Criterion Channel.
Your mom has probably never heard of Timothy Carey. And maybe you haven't, but if you're the right kind of film nerd, you may have. Carey was a bit of a wild card hanging around the movie scene and getting cast as usually an oddball, and I saw him first in The Killing where he plays a gunman who shoots a horse and still botches the job (it's a phenomenal movie and I highly recommend it).
Well, I guess in the 1960's he got his hands on some money and wrote, directed and produced this movie. And, man, making true low-budget indie movies back in the day was not easy. You had to coast on vibes and ideas. And this has both in spades.
Carey plays an insurance salesman named Clarence Hilliard. He's doing well, managing an office, has a lovely wife and children. He owns a horse and a Great Dane and a house with a yard big enough for a horse.
Narrated (occasionally) by Satan himself, the movie follows as Clarence decides he doesn't believe in any of this bunk, picks up a guitar and becomes a sort of politician/ religious leader. But his new religion is that every man is his own god - he being the goddiest of the gods. And if people are their own god, they're responsible only to themselves. He so believes in the idea, he drops the name Clarence and goes by "God" Hilliard.
He, of course, picks up converts, and makes his money initially by seducing elderly widows, promising to restore their youth and end death (at least by way of old age related maladies). He performs concerts - shaking it like Elvis - with a sort of Latino gospel rock band behind him.
Anyway - it's a whole scene. There's not much like it (but I haven't seen A Face in the Crowd from 1956) and it seems pretty keen on how movements actually do work - with absurd promises from conmen speaking to primal fears.
The movie also has a score by a pre-fame Frank Zappa. Go figure! It's now what the movie is most famous for and why it's watched by some. I will be honest and say I have a massive blind spot re: Zappa, so this impacts me in no real way other than as a bit of trivia.
SPOILERS
I was genuinely surprised at the movie's turn to religiosity in the last ten minutes, but it does narratively make sense. I guess I was surprised Carey veered off into what I think was Catholicism in the last section, and that's fine. It makes for a satisfying ending when anything else might have felt a bit preachy or dark for edginess' sake.
Not sure I'd watch this again, but as a one-off, and at just 80 minutes, it was worth a viewing.
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