DATE: Sunday, November 2, 1997              TAG: 9710310023

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J5   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: LYNN FEIGENBAUM

                                            LENGTH:   98 lines

REPORT TO READERS R-RATED REVIEWS: ARE WE GUILTY?

Would you let your kid see a movie where. . .

One character after another is decapitated with boat hooks. . .

Another is shoved into a vat of boiling water. . .

The heroine finds a dead body in her car trunk with crabs surging out of its gaping mouth. . .

. . . and so on?

Maybe you would let your kid see this, maybe you wouldn't. For some, this is just, ho-hum, another horror movie. Don't take it seriously.

The ghoulish scenario comes from ``I Know What You Did Last Summer,'' an R-rated movie that has been showing over that peak horror period around Halloween.

No one screamed when Pilot reviewer Mal Vincent, who is a couple of decades over 17, reviewed the movie on Thursday, Oct. 23. But when an eighth-grader's review ran the next day, on a Teenology page in The Daily Break, several readers objected.

It wasn't the content - the young reviewer found it a typical ``bloody-knife-hitting-a-body-at-the-heart-person-gets-killed type of movie'' and thought it was ``pretty good.'' The question was: Why send a minor to an R-rated movie?

Among those raising that question was Lois Duncan of Southern Shore, N.C. And what makes her objection particularly interesting is that she wrote the book on which the movie is based. ``VERY loosely based,'' she stressed.

Duncan felt an eighth-grader not only shouldn't have reviewed this movie, he ``should not have been allowed in the theater. I strongly suggest that kids his age not be allowed to see that movie. I had no input in regard to the script and am sickened by the film.''

It was Duncan, in fact, who described the corpse count above - believe me, I didn't see this movie. I still haven't recovered from ``House of Wax'' back in the '50s.

An R-rating requires adult accompaniment for anyone under 17. So, why did The Pilot send an eighth-grader to review ``I Know What You Did Last Summer''?

It didn't, says Michele Vernon-Chesley, education and Teenology editor. Movies, books and CDs reviewed by teens are selected by the kids themselves, she said. ``I Know What You Did Last Summer'' was the choice of the Teenology reviewer.

``We're not encouraging kids to see R-rated movies. We're reflecting what they've seen,'' she said. ``Eighth-graders are seeing these movies and they're seeing them with their parents' permission.''

Duncan, an award-winning writer of books for young adults, has strong reasons for her pointed objections. Her youngest daughter, 18-year-old Kait, was killed eight years ago and is the subject of her nonfiction book, ``Who Killed My Daughter?''

``There is no way,'' says Duncan, ``I want to be part of desensitizing kids to violence and turning murder into a game to see who can scream the loudest.''

Then why write a book like ``I Know What You Did Last Summer''?

The book is different. Duncan said her books ``take a moral approach to violence and its consequences. . . . There may be a violent act, but I don't show it - it's `off screen,' there's no gore.''

What she tries to show, she said, is the pain to the survivors and the guilt to those who got caught up in the violence.

For example, in the book version of the current movie, there's only one death and it's accidental. A year later, the four teen-agers start receiving notes saying, ``I know what you did last summer.''

The story, said Duncan, ``is about the importance of resisting peer pressure and of taking responsibility for your actions.'' Not about decapitation with boat hooks and bodies swarming with crabs.

As she's done before, Duncan said she sold the movie rights to a producer; after that, control of the screen product is out of her hands. In this case, Duncan sees the result as a film that simply sensationalizes violence.

``Violence is a fact of life these days,'' she said, ``so I'm not saying it should shouldn't show up in books. But it should not be glamorized. There's nothing funny about murder.''

I'm not trying to make a federal case of R-rated reviews, but a similar issue actually has gone to court. Mike Hiestand, an attorney with the Student Press Law Center in Arlington (the center provides free legal help to student journalists), recalls a case in New Jersey where a junior-high principal objected to reviews of R-rated movies in the school newspaper. The movies were ``Rain Man'' and ``Mississippi Burning.''

The principal's challenge went as high as the New Jersey Supreme Court, said Hiestand, and the court ruled that the students had a First Amendment right to review the movies.

Whether parents want them to is another matter. Duncan won't allow her grandchildren to see the movie based on her own book. And editor Vernon-Chesley said she wouldn't take her child, either.

In fact, after reading Duncan's letter, Vernon-Chesley said she began having second thoughts about under-17 reviewers of an R-rated movie.

Not that she'll censor them. Parents are the ones who should be making those decision, she said.

``Instead,'' she said, ``I plan to make sure the (pre-)teens mention with whom they saw the movie. At least it will give readers a better sense of how these kids are getting into those R-rated shows.''

A postscript: Lois Duncan asked me to mention that she has a web site about her daughter's case. Called ``Who Killed Kait Arquette?: Random murder or a deliberate cover-up?'' it's at: http://www.iag.net/(tilde)barq/ kait.html MEMO: Call the public editor at 446-2475 or send e-mail to

lynn(AT)pilotonline.com

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