TEHRAN: One of Iran's most powerful hardline ayatollahs wants a ban slapped on a box-office hit film that satirises the Islamic state's ruling clergy, a newspaper said on Wednesday.

The film "The Lizard", which follows the fortunes of a thief who escapes prison by donning the turban and robes of a Muslim cleric, has been playing to packed houses in Iran.

Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati - head of the Guardian Council, an un-elected constitutional watchdog with sweeping powers - said the film was a "bad influence and should be banned". "The screening of such movies must be confronted because it makes fun of clerics...it creates social corruption," the liberal Sharq newspaper quoted him as saying.

The film's release was delayed by more than a month as censors debated whether it should be banned - a common fate of many home-produced and most Western films deemed too provocative or corrupting for the Iranian public.

Eventually it was given the green light after four scenes totalling one minute were cut. Cinemas have sold out performances days in advance and been forced to schedule extra late-night screenings to cope with the huge demand.

In the film, thief Reza Marmoulak (Reza the Lizard) slips out of a prison hospital in clerical disguise and takes up the life of a man of the cloth. As a preacher, his irreverent style - cracking suggestive jokes and referring to 'brother (film-maker Quentin) Tarantino' during a sermon - has cinema audiences unaccustomed to open mockery of the clergy in stitches.

But it has not met favour everywhere. In the northeastern shrine city of Mashhad, where much of the film is set, the local judiciary banned its screening and confiscated film reels and publicity material from cinemas.

Religious hardliners, opposed to reformist President Mohammad Khatami's efforts to ease censorship, have threatened to attack cinemas showing the 'immoral' film, the hardline Jomhuri-ye Eslami newspaper said.

Many moderate clerics have praised the film, pointing to the protagonist's gradual moral transformation as he leaves behind his life of crime and finds God. -Reuters