So something my dad said got me thinking about this recently. My eldest son, who will be 11 next week, stayed over at his grandparents' house recently and because his grandad had never seen the movies before, he wanted to watch The Dark Knight trilogy with him. A few days later, when I was chatting to my dad he said to me: "So you let Zack watch The Dark Knight then?!" as if it was something he should never had seen at that age (well actually he was 7 or 8 when he first watched it). Well it's a 12 certificate movie over here (PG-13 in the US) and it's a Batman movie. Of course I am going to let him have watched it. But I knew exactly why my dad was surprised. He is of course refering to the scene involving a "magic trick" and a pencil and another scene involving what we know as a "Chelsea smile". My son even warned his grandad: "I don't like this scene coming up". Now these scenes are not particularly graphic of course, but it's the case of sometimes what you don't see is worse than what you do see. And in all honesty, that movie probably should be an 15/R certificate for those scenes and the overall "dark" tone of that movie. And Two-Face's first appearance is pretty frightening too.

On a separate occassion, I remember I was sitting in bed one night and watching Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives, a movie which is an 18 certificate over here. My son was not yet asleep at that time, he was lying in bed in the room across from mine asking me "what are you watching dad?". I told him to go to sleep but he got up, came into my room and sat next to me on the bed. Again, I told him to go back to his room and go to sleep but in the end I gave up and just let him sit and watch the rest of the movie with me. During most of the "death scenes" he would laugh or chuckle at the absurdity of it. Yeah it was bloody, gory in places, but it was so over-the-top and ridiculous, how could anyone including a kid possibly take it seriously. There is a scene where one of the female characters gets her head "twisted" off. My son didn't cower at Jason, he just laughed at the stupidness of it. He cowered at the Joker though. Having said that, my old man probably wouldn't be too impressed that I'd let him watch a Friday the 13th movie either.

So you probabaly know what my point is going to be: There are some 12/PG-13 movies which contain violence that is less appropriate for kids than many 15-18/R-rated movies. Other examples of PG-13 movies include a couple of the Mission: Impossible movies and scenes of torture. A couple of James Bond movies too. However, movies like Aliens and even the original Halloween, which famously contains zero blood or gore, are apparently less suitable and still get slapped with an '18' by the BBFC. Is the scene in the The Terminator where a "rubber-face" looking Arnold Schwarzenegger cuts out his eye with a scalpel any worse for a kid to watch than the aforementioned "pencil in the eye socket" scene from The Dark Knight. Again, what you don't see is sometimes worse than what you do...