"Everybody has their limits of what's acceptable," he said, adding that his limit was somewhere outside the theater where "Zoo" would be playing.

That guy has already made up his mind about "Zoo," an artfully crafted and surprisingly tasteful documentary that centers on a man in Washington state who died from injuries sustained from sex with a horse. After that description, you have probably made up your mind, too. That's OK, that's your right as an American - just as it was director Robinson Devor's right to make the movie in the first place. (Whether it was that Washington man's right to have sex with the horse, that varies from state to state - though Washington at the time had no laws against bestiality.)

Sometimes, though, judging a movie without seeing it can have serious repercussions, especially if you're getting on your soapbox about it.

Take the case of "Hounddog," the already-controversial drama that has its first screening tonight at Park City's Racquet Club Theatre. This is sometimes referred to as "The Dakota Fanning Rape Project," because it includes a scene in which Fanning's 12-year-old character is raped.

Is the scene gratuitous? Is it necessary to the story? Is it inappropriately revealing of the "Charlotte's Web" star? Sundance audiences will find out tonight.

But Bill Donohue, the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, isn't waiting around. On Saturday, Donohue - a regular cable-news loudmouth who in the past has waged campaigns against Kevin Smith's Catholic satire "Dogma" and the gay-clergyman drama "Priest" (though he did defend Mel Gibson after that drunk-driving episode) - urged the U.S. Department of Justice to launch an investigation, to determine whether the makers of "Hounddog" violated federal child-pornography laws when filming the movie.

Donohue's rationale for this accusation? Descriptions of the movie he heard on "Hannity & Colmes" and read in Premiere magazine and the Toronto Globe and Mail.

According to The New York Times, writer-director Deborah Kempmeier fought off similar protests when filming "Hounddog" last summer in Wilmington, N.C. The prosecutor in Wilmington looked over a cut of the film, and decided there was no child-porn case - and the prosecutor then went back to work on real child-sex cases.

It may be human nature to prejudge, to guess how something (in this case, a movie) will strike us before we invest the time to experience it. But fairness dictates we should all keep our powder dry, and see the movie before we go about condemning it.

movies@sltrib.com