Film Comment
2004 January / February
Vol. 40 No. 1
Knocking On Heaven's Door
Rediscovering Timothy Carey's The World's Greatest Sinner
By Alan Licht, p 58
[...] The World's Greatest Sinner's title song is
a raucous R&B tune – an early work by Frank Zappa. In one
of his first professional music jobs, Zappa scored the film
with a junior college orchestra, and the juxtaposition of R&B
and avant-classical themes prefigures his output with the Mothers
of Invention by several years. Despite copping Hilliard's goatee
for his own trademark look, Zappa disparaged TWGS when
he appeared on The Steve Allen Show, calling it "the
world's worst film." Nevertheless,
Daily Variety hailed it
as a masterpiece, and John Cassavetes said it had "the brilliance
of Einstein." When Carey acted alongside Elvis Presley in
Change of Habit, Elvis told him he'd always wanted
to see TWGS and asked if he had a 16mm print. Alas,
Carey had it only in 35mm.