That is quite a broad-sweeping assertion. But, I must say, I have seen some Protestant efforts – The Bible Code, Left Behind, low-budget crap on televangelical networks – and none of them offer a frisson anywhere close to what you are describing. When it comes to creepy, the Catholics have got it!
Hell, even The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima, which I did see once on a late show, was way creepier than Left Behind. And it was the kind of story that was supposed to be just the opposite of creepy.
Is there such thing as a creepy Jewish, or Muslim, or Buddhist religious film?
Or Mormon? The Mormons can make even schlock a little bit creepy. Remember the original Battlestar Galactica? There was nothing in particular about it, not even Beltar or Lucifer, at which you could point and say “That’s creepy,” but the overall atmosphere was just, somehow, as if Donnie and Marie went over to the Dark Side without even noticing.
It might have had something to do with the director/writers inventing robot bad guys so they could be destroyed with no guilt – and then making them more and more human. (I’m talking about the original BSG, mind.) See Uncanny Valley.
Not necessarily Southern Europe of Latin America. Here is the Ishenheim altarpiece, Mathias Grunewald, 1515. Contorted body, lacerated head, festering wounds, fainting Virgin, John the B with the longest index finger known to man. The whole nine yards in terms of illuminating the suffering Christ. I first saw in as an art history slide (Survey of the Northern Renaissance) and it made me gasp. I was not alone. Religion -emotive music and creepy paintings.
