Christian cinema isn’t for everyone, as is horror films based/set within the Bible (such as The Exorcist or The Omen) are for everyone. Whether or not the film is irreverent or irrelevant to one’s life depends on the secular or Christian insights of the viewers. Subtly is not part of the narrative in most of the films we’re looking at or referring to most wear their earnestness (especially those of the post-Cloud Ten Productions variety now PureFlix has entered the fray alongside Albany, Georgia-based Sherwood Pictures) on their sleeves, leaving one with a sanctimonious, but never dull (well, sometimes okay, most times) film. That theater-based ministry continued its mission until its newer location in Ambler, Pennsylvania, ceased operation in the mid-1990s. By 1968, Christian Cinema, a small theater in the Germantown area of Philadelphia, was opened by Harry Bristow to screen Christian-based films. Marks, who started the Visual Aid Center in 1945, invested in the what became the earliest video stores, by creating libraries for the faithful to rent audiovisual materials and supplies churches with product. Soon, Christian businessmen, most notably Harvey W. In the pages of the book Media, Culture, and the Religious Right by Linda Kintz and Julia Lesage (1998 University of Minnesota Press), we learn that, in the 1940s, Christian film libraries emerged. Thus the reason for the major studio biblical-based films garnering more positive reviews and box office returns than their low-budgeted, Christian-indie counterparts. And that’s because Christian filmmakers, as well as Christian musicians, are creating their preaching-to-the-choir art solely for religious purposes, forgetting they need to create good art a non-hokey art that will appeal to a mass audience beyond their respective Christian targets. That is if they don’t make you, the secular viewer, guffaw, first. Most of the films we explore on this list (and others we name drop within reviews) are intended to frighten you into believing. As is the production model of any -ploitation film, Christian Cinema product takes their “wholesome” plot points way over the top (even more so than secular exploiters), where all non-believers are inherently evil (and ripe for the guillotine, fiery pits, or mass graves), Russians, Chinese, and Israeli peoples are behind the “end times” and are inherently damned (at least in the older, more crazed films), and Christians are perpetually oppressed for their (cheesy) patriotism (e.g, a gun is put to a believer’s head as they are told to renounce Christ they’re bound, then dropped on spikes, etc.).Ĭhristploitation films - even more so with their updated, ‘ 90s and ’00s versions - are in fact, not analogous to the secular, major studio biblical films of old films that intended to inspire hope (but were “exploitative” none the less). Only, instead of clipping taboo trends or lurid content concerning sex and violence into the frames, these proselytizing flicks center around Christian practices. So instead of African-Americans or Southerners, Jesus Christ is used to gain financial success. So, let’s round up all of those “Christian Cinema” reviews - along with a few new ones, and a few you won’t expect - as we learn more about the beginnings of the genre and its post-apocalypse subgenre concerned with the Apocalypse as foretold in the Book of Revelations of The Holy Bible.Ĭhristian Cinema is known by secular audiences as Christploitation or Godsploitation, and as with any “-ploitation” sub-genre of films, such as Blaxploitation or Hicksploitation*, someone is exploited. Since then, as is our obsession with niche genres, we went a little bit overboard as we reviewed more of the puritanical pablum. We dove deep into the radioactive, post-apocalyptic pools with our two-part, two-month long September and October 2019 extravaganza with all manner of “End of the World” flicks - as well as a few from the Christian Cinema subgenre of biblical prophecy-based films.
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