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Released: 1962
"The World's Greatest Sinner is a 1962 Mega underground film written, directed and starring the Cult Legend, Timothy Carey. The self-financed film tells the story of an average man, Clarence Hilliard, who quits his day job as an insurance salesman and forms a rock band. Finding that he can whip crowds into a frenzy with his wildly unhinged rockabilly performances, Clarence takes advantage of the attention by turning his fan-base into a political party and eventually a religious cult based on the premise that every man is a god. Ironically, Clarence finances the cult by graphically seducing elderly widows out of their life savings . The more powerful Clarence becomes, the more egomaniacal and detached from reality he grows, eventually insisting upon being called God with a capital "G" and having his followers worship him as such. Soon he personally challenges the God of the Bible to prove that Clarence himself is not the true Almighty. God obliges him. The World's Greatest Sinner has never had an official release, though it has aired on the Turner Classic Movies basic cable channel. Martin Scorsese is one of the film's supporters, and has selected it in the past as one of his favorite Rock and Roll films of all time. The film features a score composed by a young pre-Mothers of Invention Frank Zappa. This film established Carey as an important figure in independent film.