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While not recommending Ghost Rider to all but the stalwart fans of films based on comic books, especially the Marvel comics, Superman, X-Men and Daredevil, it must be said that there is a lot of religious language and symbolism here that might well offer discussion points for younger audiences, as well as adults, who like to see the links between spiritual values and the movies.

Ghost Rider has been filmed by Mark Steven Johnson (who made Daredevil, a moderately successful venture but one which also had Catholic resonance) and no effort has been spared with top of the range special effects and computer work. Since the hero rides a motor bike, the effects enhance his carnival leaps through fire, over vehicles and helicopters. When he becomes the Ghost Rider (a superhuman being topped with an immense burning skull) his bike is aflame, leaving fire trails, not dust, in its wake. Ghost Rider is strong on contemporary thrills. (It should be added that its US box-office opening weekend in February 2007 was over $44,000,000, a sum which many contemporary films struggle to reach in total.)

But why choose Ghost Rider for the theme of popular culture and religion? It is a pop version of the Faust story. Mephistopheles appears in the form of the icon of bike riders, Easy Rider's Peter Fonda. He buys the soul of the teenager John Blaze (Nicolas Cage) in exchange for his father's recovery from terminal cancer. Needless to say, John does not realise what he is doing. And his motives were kind. Mephistopheles, however, puts him on hold until he is an adult in order to do the devil's work.

Meantime, the son of Mephistopheles (a malevolent Wes Bentley) is doing a Lucifer turn and raising demons to help him take over the world. It is time for John to follow in the footsteps of a legend of the American west, that of the Ghost Rider who defied Mephistopheles and stole his contract for the whole population of a town.

Already, the film raises issues of good and evil, the devil and hell and selling one's soul - though John realises that the devil has bought his soul, 'but not my spirit'.

One sequence that is religiously arresting is the Ghost Rider's saving a young woman from a mugger. He judges that the man is evil and, gazing into this man's eyes with his own fiery skull, he enables the sinner to see and experience all the hurt he has inflicted on innocent people. This look is referred to as 'The Penance Gaze'. It is a flame-filled purgatorial experience - and would be useful in discussions as an image of the need for purgation and atonement which we call Purgatory. Eventually, Black Heart (Mephistopheles' son) also experiences this purging but opts for Hell. There is quite a deal more explicit religious language and references to the Gospels. The first Vatican Council is not quoted so often these years. However, it suggested back in pre-cinema days that to understand revelation and the teaching of the Church, one of the most important means was by way of analogies. They may not have analogies like Ghsot Rider in mind. But, in the context of popular culture, they work.