For Better or Werts : TV Worth Watching

WEIRD & WILD: 'The World's Greatest Sinner' on TCM

Look up "weird" in the dictionary, and you might well find the 1962 flick The World's Greatest Sinner, a bizarre odyssey of anointedness in rock music, religion and politics that unreels Friday night at 2 a.m. ET on Turner Classic Movies' Underground showcase.

Writer-director-star Timothy Carey -- "a rough-hewn, riveting beastie" -- took on his messianic project after slathering his twisted intensity over supporting parts in The Killers, Paths of Glory, One-Eyed Jacks and the immortal 1957 four-waller Poor White Trash.

No words can do it justice, but The World's Greatest Sinner captures ego on the rampage for both its protagonist and its maker. It's a breakneck parade of omnivorous blasphemy that's been called "the most inspiring depth-charge ever put on film."

Straight outta El Monte (the L.A.-'burb where this low-budgeter was filmed), Carey plays an insurance salesman who uses rock and roll to present himself as a new god, through spellbinding rhythms that inspire riots, a presidential campaign and underage sex. If that weren't wild enough, the outrageous movie's music comes courtesy of Frank Zappa, when this mother of invention was just 22 and beginning his career as a "musical bicyclist." (Zappa promotes "the world's worst movie" to Steve Allen in the vintage TV talk show clip here.)

Watch Carey mesmerize his rock flock:

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Diane Werts has been glued to the tube since she can remember, growing up in a household where the TV came on first thing in the morning and stayed on till bedtime and beyond. She worked for the USA Film Festival, then for The Dallas Morning News writing about everything from Shakespeare to macrame art to rock music (and has the hearing loss to prove it). She moved to New York's Newsday to edit their glossy TV magazine, then returned to writing about television, specializing in its stranger permutations. She's a past president of the Television Critics Association.

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