Jaws & other surprisingly rated films.

abouttobebanned

Flicking through the movies on Sky at the moment. I saw Jaws was on...pressed the button and was just about to type in my pin when I realised I didn't had to. Jaws apparently is PG!

Surely it's a 15 film at least...a lot of scary suspense and gore...

Any other films you can think of that have been rated incorrectly in your opinion?

Mickeroo

It's no worse than Jurassic Park and thats only a PG too i think?

Galvasean

Well by today's standards Jaws is pretty tame in terms of gore (but there isn't much that can touch it in terms of suspense), but I too am surprised it was PG. Surely a 12A cert would be more suitable?

Land of the Dead was one that surprised me. It was 15PG here, despite being immensley gory.

mike65

It got a "A" (12s) rating here back in 1975, so no change then.

Galvasean

Mickeroo wrote: »

It's no worse than Jurassic Park and thats only a PG too i think?

I think Jurassic Park is PG in the UK but 12s here (well taht's what the DVD stickers say). The scene in Jaws towards the end where

Jaws bites the guy in the torso and he vomits blood

is a lot more grusome than anything in the first Jurassic Park movie. Plus

the shark eats a kid!

Kudos senior Spielbergo.
Speaking of Jurassic Park movies, the second one had some surprisingly dark death scenes:

- Eddie Carr being ripped in half by two tyrannosaurs
- T. rex stepping on a guy repeatedly.
- The Robert T. Bakker lookalike guy who gets muched by a T. rex in teh cave and his blood trickles down in the waterfall.

Mickeroo

These days its sex or sexual violence that earns an 18 rating more than anything i think.

Mickeroo

Galvasean wrote: »

I think Jurassic Park is PG in the UK but 12s here (well taht's what the DVD stickers say). The scene in Jaws towards the end where

Jaws bites the guy in the torso and he vomits blood

is a lot more grusome than anything in the first Jurassic Park movie. Plus

the shark eats a kid!

Kudos senior Spielbergo.
Speaking of Jurassic Park movies, the second one had some surprisingly dark death scenes:

- Eddie Carr being ripped in half by two tyrannosaurs
- T. rex stepping on a guy repeatedly.
- The Robert T. Bakker lookalike guy who gets muched by a T. rex in teh cave and his blood trickles down in the waterfall.

ah yeah you're right actually

robert shaw's death left me a bit scarred as a kid actually

must have blocked it out

mike65

Context is very important with regard to how classifers rate a film, stuff like dinosaurs ripping heads off is minor stuff as its pure fantasy Kids love that stuff even if they scream at the time. On the other hand the depiction of much more subtle violence in a domestic/family setting will be much more carefully considered.

krudler

mike65 wrote: »

Context is very important with regard to how classifers rate a film, stuff like dinosaurs ripping heads off is minor stuff as its pure fantasy Kids love that stuff even if they scream at the time. On the other hand the depiction of much more subtle violence in a domestic/family setting will be much more carefully considered.

Exactly, Arnie can kill 100 or so people and its fantasy violence, if it was a drama about someone beating one person gruesomely to death it's a lot more powerful.

PG movies back in the 80s got away with a lot more, look at back to the future even, theres loads of swearing in it, minor stuff like sh1t but still.

DazMarz

I often thought The Matrix was very much a '15' film at most, yet it has an '18' rating here... The violence in it isn't too gratuitous, nor are there any sex scenes, nor is there staccato-swearing. Yes, high-falutin' plots involving enslaved mankind and a dystopian future... but surely nothing too traumatising for U-18's....

Face/Off being rated '18' was another one. Again, with the above, the violence (even the face-swapping bits) was never all that gratuitous, sex scenes were minimal to non-existent but there was some language alright, but nothing that I wouldn't have heard in a '15' rated actioner before. Again, can't think of anything that would be that bad to make it warrant an '18' cert.

krudler

DazMarz wrote: »

I often thought The Matrix was very much a '15' film at most, yet it has an '18' rating here... The violence in it isn't too gratuitous, nor are there any sex scenes, nor is there staccato-swearing. Yes, high-falutin' plots involving enslaved mankind and a dystopian future... but surely nothing too traumatising for U-18's....

Face/Off being rated '18' was another one. Again, with the above, the violence (even the face-swapping bits) was never all that gratuitous, sex scenes were minimal to non-existent but there was some language alright, but nothing that I wouldn't have heard in a '15' rated actioner before. Again, can't think of anything that would be that bad to make it warrant an '18' cert.

The Matrix had multiple headbutts removed from our cut, they're still on the R1 version, the unedited fights between Smith/Morpheus and smith/Neo are much better, especially the Neo fight in the subway station at the end. Headbutts are a big no-no to British and Irish censors apparently, even Attack Of The Clones had one removed. but yet Fellowship of the Ring has them intact, Aragorn gets one when fighting the head Uruk'Hai at the end.

Face/Off had the scene where Travolta shows the daughter how to use a butterfly knife, again a big no-no. If you watch the dvd theres a horrible edit where hes asks "do you have protection" and the it cuts to him showing her the now open knife, the music his an unexplanible crescendo as he's meant to twirl it around and show her how to use it, and again at the end where she stabs him they cut the shot of her taking out the knife.

violence in movies is a funny old thing, Braveheart is 15 yet has pretty gruesome stuff in the battle scenes, but as its historical violence it gets away with it, i imagine an action movie where someone gets a hammer to the face would be instantly hit with an 18 cert.

DazMarz

krudler wrote: »

The Matrix had multiple headbutts removed from our cut, they're still on the R1 version, the unedited fights between Smith/Morpheus and smith/Neo are much better, especially the Neo fight in the subway station at the end. Headbutts are a big no-no to British and Irish censors apparently, even Attack Of The Clones had one removed. but yet Fellowship of the Ring has them intact, Aragorn gets one when fighting the head Uruk'Hai at the end.

Face/Off had the scene where Travolta shows the daughter how to use a butterfly knife, again a big no-no. If you watch the dvd theres a horrible edit where hes asks "do you have protection" and the it cuts to him showing her the now open knife, the music his an unexplanible crescendo as he's meant to twirl it around and show her how to use it, and again at the end where she stabs him they cut the shot of her taking out the knife.

violence in movies is a funny old thing, Braveheart is 15 yet has pretty gruesome stuff in the battle scenes, but as its historical violence it gets away with it, i imagine an action movie where someone gets a hammer to the face would be instantly hit with an 18 cert.

This is all true above... I hate films that get butchered by censors. FFS, we see stuff a million times worse in the news anyway... Load of rubbish. Society is now probably at its most de-sensitised to violence etc. as it has ever been... Time to censor the censors!!!

Galvasean

DazMarz wrote: »

This is all true above... I hate films that get butchered by censors. FFS, we see stuff a million times worse in the news anyway... Load of rubbish. Society is now probably at its most de-sensitised to violence etc. as it has ever been... Time to censor the censors!!!

Someone mentioned in another thread that in Evil Dead the British censored cut out a bit where someone kicks Bruce in the head after he's been knocked to the ground. The same film where a man cuts his arm off and replaces it witha chainsaw and a woman gets

raped bya selection of trees

. I know the latter examples are definately fantasy but it's so odd.
Also if you look at Tom & Jerry they beat the living snot out of each other ina variety of ways, but they aren't allowed show Tom picking up Jerry by the head in case kids try imitate it. The very same cartoon where Jaerry just wrapped a gold club around Tom's neck. :rolleyes:

conorhal

Spielberg seems to feature in many 'surprizing ratings scenario's', but that's no surprise. When there's money to be made rating's get flexible, the American PG-13 rating was actually created for Temple of Doom:

From
http://www.seattlepi.com/movies/187529_pg13rating24.html

This is the story of how a gooey green guy in a microwave, a pagan witchdoctor with a beating heart in his hand and that unlucky numeral 13 changed the way Hollywood makes its movies.
It has been two decades since the summer of 1984, when "Gremlins" and "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" caused an uproar among some parents who took their young children to the PG-rated films and walked out wishing the rating had suggested more guidance than just "parental guidance suggested."
The solution became the PG-13 rating.
But instead of being solely an extra warning to parents, as it was originally conceived, it has evolved into the preferred rating of studios and filmmakers. As Steven Spielberg told The Associated Press recently, PG-13 puts "hot sauce" on a movie in the viewer's mind.
The genesis of PG-13 is directly linked to Spielberg, who in 1984 became a lightning rod for parental ire.
"I created the problem and I also supplied the solution ... I invented the rating," Spielberg, the producer of "Gremlins" and director of "Temple of Doom," said in a recent interview.
With no middle-ground between PG and R, the ratings board of the 1980s frequently wrestled with the right way to classify movies that should and should not be viewed by children. The flaw in the Motion Picture Association of America's rating system was that it lumped all children -- from infants to 17-year-olds -- into the same group.
Maybe the "Gremlin" who met his steaming, grisly demise inside that kitchen appliance, or the chest-popping human sacrifice that put the doom in "Temple of Doom," were too graphic for grade-school kids, but what about the teenage couples looking for a scary reason to cuddle in the movie theater?
Ultimately, both movies made it to theaters with the PG designation.
After "Temple of Doom" opened May 23, some parents complained to theater managers and the ratings board that their kids were mortified, and news reports began questioning whether the ratings board was being too lax.
Jack Valenti, the longtime MPAA head who recently announced his retirement, told the AP that the heart scene was the catalyst. "By today's standards it's not a big deal," he said. "But it was pretty off-putting. And there was a real problem about how to label that picture."
"Everybody was screaming, screaming, screaming that it should have had an R-rating, and I didn't agree," Spielberg said.

mike65

With no middle-ground between PG and R, the ratings board of the 1980s frequently wrestled with the right way to classify movies that should and should not be viewed by children. The flaw in the Motion Picture Association of America's rating system was that it lumped all children -- from infants to 17-year-olds -- into the same group.

Rightly noted as the problem in the states, just about every other country has always had something between 12 and "adult" ratings. I always though it odd they had no AA/15 type rating in the old days. Even R is a strange rating allowing as it does a child in under "supervision". Horses for courses obviously but not many would consider say The Exorcist/Alien/Clockwork Orange/Godfather appropriate for children and yet they could see them as long as a legal guardian was with them

check out what got when and when http://www.filmratings.com/filmRatings_Cara/

bonerm

abouttobebanned wrote: »

Flicking through the movies on Sky at the moment. I saw Jaws was on...pressed the button and was just about to type in my pin when I realised I didn't had to. Jaws apparently is PG!

Surely it's a 15 film at least...a lot of scary suspense and gore...

Any other films you can think of that have been rated incorrectly in your opinion?

(Spoilers below)

I think it should be noted that there is a difference the constituent elements that make up the movie and how that film actually makes you feel or react.

Jaws is skillfully put together to scare you. You hear lots of scary music, see people getting pulled around in the water and see bloody limbs floating about in the water etc. But actual amount of violence on-screen is minimal. IIRC the only scene where you clearly see the shark biting into a person is during the Quint killing. Plus you have to bear in mind that the violences is all shark-on-man and man-on-shark so I reckon the censors probably make exceptions for that too?

It's a credit to the makers if a film that gets away with being PG with a tone that would unnerve people more than most 18s horrors.

krudler

bonerm wrote: »

(Spoilers below)

Anyone who hasnt seen Jaws shouldn't be posting on a movie forum

bonerm

krudler wrote: »

Anyone who hasnt seen Jaws shouldn't be posting on a movie forum

I agree. However had I not put it there I'd no doubt return here in one hour to see the post of some pinhead dissing me for ruining a movie they hadn't seen yet.

MrSir

Step Brothers was 18's on DVD.
Blasted censors trying to keep me relieving myself over Will Ferrel's nutsack on a drumkit!
Sometimes I forgot I'm talking to people on Boards.

humanji

Just as a side, There's a documentary about Jaws on the Bio channel tonight at 9pm.

Basq

I bought the special edition of Jaws a while back in Tesco.. and it's on my DVD shelf. And it's rated 12's (UK cert) - not PG.

krudler

afaik it was the making of documentary that rated it 12, Spielberg says fcuk on it.

Basq

Ah, gotcha!

mike65

krudler wrote: »

afaik it was the making of documentary that rated it 12, Spielberg says fcuk on it.

I bet Bruce wasn't more than a fins splash away when he said it as well.

johnny_ultimate

Special features knock quite a few age ratings up (there's usually wee text noting this near the certificate box). I watched the Umbrellas of Cherbourg the other night - rated 'U' or 'G' or whatever, knocked up to 15s because of the bonus disc.

Having a brief look at my DVD collection there, the only ones that stand out as being particularly are unusual are Manhattan and Garden State as IFCO 18s, which seems a bit high to me. Less that are rated too low - Persona's PG rating probably is too low though, mainly on the back of a certain scene in which a sexual encounter is described in pretty graphic detail. Not that many younger kids will or should be watching Persona anyway.

Basq

Garden State is definitely not deserved of an 18's cert alright.

From a glance of my collection.. I find it slightly odd that 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' is 15's - other than an occasional swear-word, it plays out fairly tamely to other John Hughes rated at 15's movies (Weird Science, The Breakfast Club) that allude to sex and drugs.

bonerm

Star Wars Episode III Revenge of the Sith is a '12s' cert. There's no sex, swearing or "realistic" violence in the movie.

I'm guessing it must have got it for

the immolation scene

alone?

DazMarz

bonerm wrote: »

Star Wars Episode III Revenge of the Sith is a '12s' cert. There's no sex, swearing or "realistic" violence in the movie.

I'm guessing it must have got it for

the immolation scene

alone?

I always assumed that III got such a 'high' rating for a Star Wars film as it was so much darker than previous installments; implied massacring of children, evil seemingly triumphing over good etc.

In all previous Star Wars films, there was some sense of light-heartedness, but this one was darker than any of them and perhaps it was just the entire film as a whole that was deemed to be worthy of a '12' rating, rather than any individual parts of it.

Galvasean

Garden State 18s? Is drug use an automatic 18s cert?

johnny_ultimate

Galvasean wrote: »

Garden State 18s? Is drug use an automatic 18s cert?

Yeah it must be that. There's bad language, and that tame enough sequence in the hotel featuring a 'spy hole', but it's probably the drugs / mental illness theme that knocked it up.

Also, my copy of Episode III is definitely PG.

You should read the BBFC or the IFCO reviews of films for why they were given certain certificates - they can make for interesting reads.

This is the BBFC's ruling of Lovely Bones as a 12A, which I really thought should have been a 15A

Contains Spoilers

THE LOVELY BONES is a drama about a 14-year-old girl whose spirit inhabits a limbo between life and death from which she tells of her murder by a neighbour and tries to influence subsequent events to prevent the killer from striking again and to reconcile her grieving family. The film was passed at '12A' and contains a child murder theme, disturbing scenes and moderate violence, issues which all lay on the borderline between the '12A' and '15' categories.

The child murder theme is established very early in the film as the central character, Susie, reveals the fact of her death as she speaks from the afterlife. This prepares the audience for the events that unfold with Susie looking back at what happened and regretting not being more aware of the danger, but using her experience to warn of the threat to other members of her family in the time after her own death. The theme also takes in the history of her murderer and his previous crimes. The BBFC Guidelines at '12A/12' state that 'Mature themes are acceptable, but their treatment must be suitable for young teenagers', and although the film's central thematic element was recognized as having the potential to disturb and upset, it was felt that the film carried certain balancing factors that allowed it to be made available to this age group. Among these is the film's source - a novel by Alice Sebold - with which young teenagers might be familiar, and a strong and accessible cautionary message about 'stranger danger' that addresses this audience, who would also be given reassurance by Susie's determination to help her family from the afterlife which then finds her teenage sister displaying her own bravery and resourcefulness. Although Susie's existence in the afterlife is filled with anxiety and regret at her life being cut short which reinforce the darker tonal characteristics of the film, these are also balanced by the beautiful, fantastical setting in which she finds herself and the presence of someone - another murder victim - whose friendship and encouragement enable her to eventually come to terms with her death. The overall treatment of the

In conjunction with its theme, the film also contains a number of disturbing scenes which include the murderer luring Susie into an underground den where he presents a calculated and sinister threat. The Guidelines at '12A/12' allow for 'Moderate physical and psychological threat [...], provided disturbing sequences are not frequent or sustained'. This proviso is satisfied here, and the audience is not shown any details of Susie's actual death. A later scene, presented as a fantasy, finds Susie in a bathroom in which her murderer is cleaning up after his crime and contains images of muddy clothing and a sink with traces of blood, as well as a shot of the razor used as the murder weapon. These images are not, however, dwelt upon unduly and the scene is a key moment in the narrative as it brings home to Susie the fact that she has been murdered. Another scene contains images of the bodies of the killer's previous victims and, although tonally disturbing, the injury detail is relatively discreet, as is the case in a sequence where the killer places a sack containing Susie's body inside a large safe, but all that is seen is a patch of blood on the sack. These scenes are also significant moments in Susie's story as they enable her to come to terms with her fate and were felt to meet with the requirement of the Guidelines at '12A/12' that 'There should be no emphasis on injuries or blood, but occasional gory moments may be permitted if justified by the context'.

Moderate violence occurs in a scene in which a character is attacked and beaten with fists and a baseball bat. The scene is intense and carries some impact, but does not contain details of the blows being delivered, and was considered as falling within the allowance of the Guidelines at '12A/12': 'Moderate violence is allowed but should not dwell on detail'. The scene also includes the single use of the term '****' in the film which meets with the Guidelines' allowance of infrequent strong language at '12A/12'.

Other language in the film includes uses of 'moron', 'crap', ''jerk off' and 'piss off'. Smoking also features in the film but this is limited to a single older character and the activity is not glamorised.