The violent scenes in the latest Batman film, The Dark Knight, have prompted a record number of objections about its classification with a 12A certificate.

In just over a week since the film, starring the late Heath Ledger as the Joker, was released in this country, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has received 70 complaints about the certification. There were 110 complaints about the 12A certificate for the 2006 James Bond film Casino Royale, but these were received over several weeks.

Parents have complained of having to shield their children’s eyes from scenes such as a man’s eye being jabbed with a pencil and the Joker describing how he enjoys killing people with a knife because they take longer to die.

This weekend Labour MP Keith Vaz, who is chairman of the Commons home affairs committee, said he would be summoning the BBFC to its hearings on knife crime in October. “The BBFC should realise there are scenes of gratuitous violence in The Dark Knight to which I would certainly not take my 11-year-old daughter,” said Vaz, who saw the film on Friday. “It should be a 15 classification.”

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Critics have warned that the BBFC is becoming both too liberal and too willing to cave in to commercial pressure from Hollywood studios to maximise audience numbers. The board has admitted that its decision on The Dark Knight was “borderline 15” – meaning that its examiners nearly gave it a 15. The 12A means children of 12 can go unaccompanied.

Parents are allowed to take children younger than 12 with them to the Batman film, although they are advised not to. Children as young as nine have been seen watching it.

Among those to complain to the BBFC is Nicholas Henderson, a marketing manager from Surrey, who saw the film with three adult friends.

“It’s immoral and unethical. None of us could believe it was a 12A,” said Henderson, who has also written to Joshua Berger, head of the UK arm of Warner Bros, the distributors. “Berger should go before the home affairs select committee’s knife crime inquiry to explain himself.”

The Dark Knight is more lifelike and contains more violent scenes than previous Batman films, which have been closer to the original cartoon style. Many parents did not realise how different the new film, released at the start of the school summer holidays, is from the rest of the series.

The first appeared in 1989 and starred Michael Keaton and Kim Basinger. In addition to the eye scene (which does not show the moment of contact) and the Joker’s comments on knife killing, the same character is shown threatening to slit a victim’s mouth open.

The BBFC simply states on its main website classification that The Dark Knight “contains moderate violence and sustained threat”. Few people read the website and even fewer know of its page of “extended consumer advice for parents”.

The site summarises the film as “a super-hero movie” and acknowledges elsewhere that it “contains a good deal of violence, but not in detail”.

The BBFC has confirmed that Warner Bros asked for The Dark Knight to be classified as 12A and admitted that the board “comes under pressure to keep classifications low” so that as many people as possible can see films.

“The real problem is that in previous Batman films, Jack Nicholson’s Joker was jokier,” said John Whittingdale, Tory chairman of the Commons culture, media and sport committee.

“This ‘Joker’ is truly evil. Yet most parents and children would not know this beforehand. Also, nobody goes to the BBFC’s website for parental advice.”

The board says its director, David Cooke, did not see the film before it was classified, although he has watched it recently. It is understood he supported the 12A classification.

In Scandinavia and Ireland the film is a 15 and even in America, which is usually more liberal on film violence, the critic of The New Yorker magazine warned: “Do not, despite its PG13 [certificate], bring the children.”

BOND AMONG 12A SHOCKERS

— Casino Royale, the 2006 Bond film, was given a 12A even though the BBFC demanded cuts to a torture scene

— Angelina Jolie, star of Beowulf, expressed surprise at its 12A, saying the film “shocked me”

— Matt Damon urged parents not to take their children to see his 2002 hit The Bourne Identity, the first film given a 12A

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