MOVIES - Sept. 12, 1988

About 50 people attended the first showing of “The Last Temptation of Christ” in Pensacola, Fla., without incident, after a federal judge blocked a first-in-the-nation county ordinance banning theaters from showing it. “Red flags should run up” whenever government tries to violate the rights of citizens,” U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson ruled, issuing a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the Escambia County ordinance. At Pensacola’s Plaza III Theaters for the movie’s debut Friday, there were a dozen pickets and no violence. . . . Meanwhile, the subway system in London has banned posters advertising the film, which opened there this weekend. And Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie, spiritual head of the Church of England who represents 70 million Anglicans worldwide, and Cardinal Basical Hume, leader of 5.2 million Catholics in England and Wales, have urged Christians to boycott the Martin Scorsese film. . . . Finally, in Pittsburgh, three people, saying the movie depicts Jesus as a “vacillating, weak, sinful and almost demented individual,” have sued to change the title to “The Lies and Profanations of Universal Pictures as Pertaining to the Life of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”