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BRITAIN’S film censors are facing controversy over their decision to allow one of the most violent movies of recent years to be screened without any cuts.

Eastern Promises, directed by David Cronenberg, includes scenes so gruesome that, at its British premiere last week, members of the audience gasped and turned away from the screen. But it was awarded an 18 certificate without any cuts because the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has introduced a policy of not removing violence from films, except in a few cases, such as explicit scenes of rape.

The board has become so liberal towards violence that even some of its former leaders are concerned. “It is now out of step with public opinion,” said Mike Bor, the BBFC’s chief examiner from 1983 to 2000.

The shocking sequences in Eastern Promises, which centres on the Russian mafia in London, include one in which a knife is twisted repeatedly and gleefully into a man’s eye and two showing victims having their throats cut in graphic detail.

Andreas Whittam Smith, a former president of the BBFC, said he had not seen Eastern Promises but that when he ran the board, from 1998 to 2002, he had used an “unofficial test” to decide on cuts.

“If I thought this was the type of film that was likely to make people leave the cinema, or even make them have to look away for quite a while, then I would question why the scene should be left in,” Whittam Smith said.

This weekend, the BBFC stood by its decision. “Scenes that make people turn away are part of the fun of going to movies,” a spokesman said.

The board added: “These days we are not here to cut; we are here to provide information and let people then make up their minds . . . People also have expectations of what a Cronenberg film is.”

Any filmgoer wishing to check the BBFC’s information about Eastern Promises would find it on a page deep inside the board’s website.

The details are prefaced with the words “Spoiler alert”, meaning that viewers not wanting to know what was in the film should not read on.

Cronenberg’s films have often caused controversy before. Crash, released in Britain in 1997, an adaptation of a book by the novelist JG Ballard, featured a sexual fetish involving car-crash victims. It was banned by several local authorities.

Eastern Promises, starring Viggo Mortensen, who made his name in The Lord of the Rings, and Naomi Watts, whose films include Mulholland Drive and 21 Grams, goes on general release next weekend, after its premiere at the London Film Festival.

Cronenberg, 64, who has been attacked for the violence in some of his other movies, such as Naked Lunch, A History of Violence and Dead Ringers, defended his latest production. “To turn the camera away would be a betrayal,” he said. “I take violence seriously, as I want people to see the physical side of what really happens.

“This is not the sort of impressionistic violence that you get in the Bourne films. I think I have never gone too far in my movies. What violence there is emerges organically.”

However, the violence in Eastern Promises is likely to upset viewers and councils, which still have the power to ban films. And although critics are often inured to scenes of sex and violence, some have already been alarmed. One referred to “a number of unpleasant scenes, with the camera lingering on a bloody fight scene in a Turkish baths”. Another remarked that the violence “in one case is, literally, eye-popping”.

The scene in which an eye is gouged out was described by another critic as “making James Bond’s famous sink-bashing killing in Casino Royale look like light relief”, and Empire, the film monthly, says it is “the type of visceral sequence you leave the cinema talking about”.

The BBFC now cuts scenes from films with an 18 certificate only in cases of extreme sexual violence – particularly when the perpetrator appears to be enjoying it – and violence that might encourage others to ape it.

The board, however, has made some moves to appease critics. Two months ago, it began to post details of violent scenes in each film it certifies in notes on its website. The notes on Eastern Promises read: “There are three key scenes of extremely visceral violence . . . These images focus on the actual process of violence in bloody detail with a clear element of sad-ism which goes beyond what is suitable at ‘15’ but is suitable for adults at ‘18’.”

Cronenberg, who admitted he had never met any Russian mob-sters living in London, denied violence in films affected audiences. In the 1970s, concern over extreme violence led to the withdrawal of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange from British cinemas.

Cronenberg added: “I must have seen a million people killed in movies over 40 years, but I’ve never had the impulse to kill.”

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