Children's Animated Films More Frightening Than Adult Movies

By Dr. Brian McDonough, Medical Editor

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Children's animated films have been around since the time most of us were kids. Since the 1937 premier of Snow White kids have been entertained by the magical combination of animation and the movies. But the British Medical Journal has a somewhat disturbing report that you may have noticed either when you took the kids to the theater or saw one of these features yourself.

The scientists found children's films are dangerous places to be. Death and destruction are quite common themes.

They looked at 45 animated films and compared them to films that adults were seeing.

After adjusting for total run-time and years since release, the study found risk of on-screen death was 2.5 times higher in children's animated films than the grown-up ones.

It gets worse. The rate of murder was three times higher in the children's films and yes, parental figures die quite often in these films as well.