OUTRAGED mother Susan Pittilla is claiming her daughter was upset by a violent movie trailer before watching a children's film at a cinema.

Mrs Pittilla, 38, of Portland, complained that a trailer for the film Vanilla Sky, starring Tom Cruise, was unsuitable.

She was in Cineworld to watch children's film Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, with husband Ian, son Christopher, 16, and daughters Kayleigh, 15, and Amelia, seven.

Mrs Pittilla said: "The trailer showed a clip of someone driving one of the characters over a cliff. Apparently it was a PG trailer but I was worried about what was being shown.

"Discretion would have been the better part of common sense here. That is not the kind of thing I want to be explaining to my seven-year-old at this point in life."

She said trailers and pre-film shorts should be suited to the age group of the main feature. She was also angry about a pre-film cartoon, which she claimed showed 'gratuitous violence'.

The cartoon, encouraging people not to smoke, talk, or use mobile phones during the film, depicts an animated character knocking two people's heads together to stop them talking.

Mrs Pittilla said she found it 'totally degrading and utterly disgusting'. She promised to boycott the cinema until it was removed.

"We've just moved from Portsmouth to rural Dorset to escape all that violence," she said.

She has written letters of complaint to the Weymouth Cineworld manager and to the group's London head office.

Hailey Sharp, Cineworld manager, said: "We are having our policy on trailers changed for children's films to tone down the violence."

But she said the Vanilla Sky trailer had a PG certificate, matching the rating of the Harry Potter film. It was company policy to show the clip advising against anti-social behaviour in the cinema, she said.