Last weekend, Eli Roth's Hostel: Part II opened. According to the raters, it contains ''sadistic scenes of torture and bloody violence, terror, nudity, sexual content, language, and some drug content.'' Kids should stop reading now, because they could have added: ''Bound man's penis and testicles visibly severed with shears and fed to dog'' and ''Nude woman suspended, bound and gagged, throat slashed as another nude woman below bathes orgasmically in her blood.'' (Oh, uh, spoiler alert, I guess.) Hostel: Part II is rated R, which means it's perfectly okay to take a 5-year-old to see it if you can't get a sitter.
The ratings system is supposed to serve the interests of parents. Help me out, moms and dads: How'd they do this time?
Having seen Hostel: Part II, I'll spare you my feelings about why can you top this? horror comedies about torture are not my idea of a fun night out (although contrary to rumor, Roth is neither untalented nor the Antichrist). I'd rather expend my indignation on the people who gave the movie a rating that, in practical terms, is no different from a G. All that an R rating mandates is that a child doesn't walk into Hostel: Part II alone, as if the presence of a grown-up ''guardian'' magically renders a movie more appropriate for grade-schoolers. Of course, the raters could have given it an NC-17, which would have kept all children out. But they looked at that nude, tortured woman and genital mutilation, and decided it didn't cross the line.
