Boy Has Seizure Over Gory Scene in "Prometheus"

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The boy's collapse raised questions about whether the film, released on Thursday, was given too moderate a rating.

In the Ridley Scott feature, a prequel to his 1979 hit Alien, Noomi Rapace's character Elizabeth performs an emergency caesarean section on herself to remove an alien.

Although Prometheus, also starring Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron and Guy Pearce, was given an R rating in the US, which restricts people under 17 from seeing it without an accompanying parent, it was given an M rating in Australia.

The Australian Classification Board originally classified Prometheus as MA15+, meaning under 15s needed to be accompanied by a guardian.

But that was dropped to M on appeal by distributor Fox to the Australian Classification Review Board so it could be seen by younger viewers without an accompanying adult.

The 15-year-old was watching the film at Jindabyne, in the state's south, when he passed out during the scene and began having a seizure.

He was taken to Cooma District Hospital where he was in a stable condition yesterday.

Sydney-based filmmaker Joseph Sims, who has seen Prometheus twice, said similar reports of moviegoers suffering seizures occurred when Pulp Fiction came out in 1994.

"Even though that was a higher rated movie, people kept passing out in the scene when John Travolta delivers the adrenalin shot to Uma Thurman's heart," he said.

"There's a famous story where Quentin Tarantino was at a New York theatre presenting the film and someone had a seizure during that scene."

Mr Sims, who wrote and directed Bad Behaviour starring John Jarratt, said he thought the scene in Prometheus wasn't particularly gory as they had "blackened" the colour of the blood.

"It was probably the squirming of the alien and the whole concept of the surgery, which is quite horrible," he said.

Fox was unavailable for comment last night.



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