"Indeed. I would NOT let an 8-year old watch the G-rated Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (bloody corpse stuffed into a church bell, gory Drac impalements, etc.)... but I would permit them to see Van Helsing."

I dunno. I'd much rather my kids see DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE (a traditional Gothic) over VAN HELSING (an A/V overload), any day of the week. Guess I'm stange like that. I might have been 8 years old when I saw GRAVE.

As for theater going, My kids are too young at the age of two and three. They get restless after an hour and people who actually pay for their tickets shouldn't be bothered. When they are old enough it will have to the obvious stuff Pixar/Disney, DreamWorks, Sony's family branch and maybe a Marvel or DC movie if it is approriate. When I see a kid a R rated movie screening, that seems strange. My wife is a school teacher and she was telling me about how some her students saw SIN CITY in a theater. What?

Sometimes at home I'll show them a 10 minute a clip of something reto like WINGS or FRANKENSTEIN or a Western.