News > NY Mag's Top Ten Anti-Christian Films of All Time

Written by John Lichman

Clearly not swayed by The Golden Compass, released today, New York Magazine's Vulture has unleashed their 10 picks for films that really fuck the Big G over. 

But the list (which can be seen in its YouTube-entirety here) has some choice cuts:  

10. Carrie (1976)

 

After the titular protagonist gets her first period at school, her crazy, devoutly Christian mother locks her in a closet and tells her to pray, explaining that only sinners menstruate (Wikipedia says this is false). Luckily, Carrie has telekinetic powers, which she uses to toss her mom across a room, electrocute her principal, and burn down her high school's gymnasium, killing hundreds of students. Parents, take note.

 

#8. Footloose (1974)

Despite its canonical status as an eighties classic, we’re willing to bet that if an original script like Footloose — in which fun-loving teen Kevin Bacon arrives in a small town where preacher John Lithgow has banned rock music and dancing — landed on a Hollywood exec’s desk today, they’d be too afraid to produce it, lest it offend some key demographic. It’s Lithgow’s villain who really makes the movie: Soft-spoken and patronizing when he’s not spitting out the fire and brimstone ("He’s testing us!!"), his performance is a bone-chilling portrait of smug self-righteousness and could easily blend in among any number of Sunday-morning-TV preachers. The only thing missing is a bad hairpiece.

 

#3. The Boys of St. Vincent (1993)

This four-hour Canadian telefilm is a difficult, complex portrait of a Catholic orphanage ruled over by a pedophilic priest (Henry Czerny, in a role that launched him into a career of playing creepy bastards). But the film isn't anti-Christian because it's yet another movie about a priest who can't keep his hands off the flock; it's anti-Christian because its primary theme is the creeping danger of Catholicism's emphasis on submission of the self to those above you on the pecking order, whether that's a priest, a Church administrator, or God Himself.

 

#1. The Canterbury Tales(1972)

Although he made what many still consider to be the quintessential Jesus movie (The Gospel According to St. Matthew, 1964), Italian Marxist homosexual poet Pier Paolo Pasolini was no fan of religious dogma, and his sex-drenched, free-form adaptation of Geoffrey Chaucer's poem constantly thumbs its nose at the falsely pious. But Pasolini saves the big one for the end: The film ends with a shocking and hilarious vision of Hell in which Satan cracks open his butt cheeks and shits out streams of screaming friars. In close-up. Repeatedly. Sadly, we were unable to find this clip on YouTube, but then we realized we could put it up ourselves. Enjoy, because it won't last long.

Uh, NSFW, unless you work in Hell.

(YouTube link here. May be gone by the time you read this. Also, note: NSFW. Friars are shat out of Satan. Literally.)