10 Controversial Movies Everyone Misunderstood

3. Child's Play 3

The release of 1991 slasher movie sequel Child's Play 3 caused an historic moral panic in the U.K., after it was subject to a trial-by-mass-media with accusations that it influenced the 1993 murder of British two-year-old Jamie Bulger at the hands of two young boys who watched the film.

Though the link between Child's Play 3 and the killing was actually rubbished in the investigation itself - where it was held the boys hadn't even watched it - the British media clung to the prospect of the movie "training" the boys to kill Bulger, which naturally transpired through to large swaths of the British public.

To concerned parents, it didn't matter that the film's link to the murder was denied by the authorities - it was going to transform their precious babies, or other people's children, into psychopathic killers no matter what.

In retrospect the controversy is especially bizarre as the film is neither terribly graphic nor a particularly good horror film, and despite what history might tell you, it's a pretty disposable, forgettable horror sequel.