X-rated film-promotion game

An X-rated videogame promoting an R-rated movie, as the National Institute on Media & the Family's president David Walsh put it. It was a curious marketing strategy for "Running Scared," a film that did not get great reviews and with a "story line" highly populated by prostitutes, pimps, mobsters, bad cops, and pedophiles (the Chicago Trib's reviewer did have "a sneaking suspicion" that the film "could become a cult classic, and an even better hunch that it will top the box office this week. And who can blame moviegoers? It does, after all, have a lot of characters." Of the film's companion videogame's two versions, found at its Web site, the one rated "M" (for 17+) has sexually explicit content on Level 2 (which has a form of age verification with the required registration). The Minneapolis-based National Institute issued a parental alert, and WCCO-TV in Minnesota reported that the "racy interlude has apparently [since] been removed." The Institute does an annual "report card" on videogame violence. Here's another review of "Running Scared" in the Harrisburg Patriot-News.