As you may know, I'm a big fan of traumatizing kids movies. So when I came upon Brian Hanson's article, The 8 PG-Rated Movies That Should Not Have Been Rated PG, I knew I'd need to post a bit of it. Here's a smackering of freaky-ass movies that somehow got the same rating as Shrek.
Gremlins (1984)
It's been widely acknowledged that both Gremlins and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,
Steven Spielberg's one-two 1984 punch of darkly comic blockbusters,
directly led to the creation of the PG-13 rating. Gremlins is
chock-full of wanton puppet terror and gore, with the titular hellions
getting stabbed, beheaded, and exploded in wonderful blurts of green
and brown. Of course, despite creating the PG-13 rating, neither Gremlins nor Temple of Doom were ever submitted for re-rating, so the PG rating still stands to this day for both movies. So Gremlins,
with its graphic tale of Phoebe Cates' character's father decaying and
rotting in a Santa suit after getting stuck inside the chimney on
Christmas, gets the PG pass.
Wizards (1977)
Yay, a cartoon set off in a magical land! Sounds like Shrek again. Hold up, this baby's directed by Ralph Bashki, the guy who made edgy, X-rated cartoons like Fritz the Cat and Heavy Traffic (and the controversial Saturday morning update of Mighty Mouse). Wizards is
a certifiable, goddamn mess, full of lame rotoscoped animation and
tasteless invocation of Nazi imagery, but even for a PG-rated movie in
1977 it feels a little grotesque. There's a seemingly endless battle
scene chock full of crudely-animated orcs and elves disemboweling each
other, lots of cartoon characters saying naughty words, and a buxom
nymph whose nipples seem incapable of being properly contained by her
sheer clothing.
Watership Down (1978)
I touched on this in my own traumatizing kids movies article, but not enough can be said abut the movie in which cute fluffy bunnies rip the bloody hell out of each other.
It's pretty much a cartoon bunny
horror film, as a small, ragtag group of rabbits are slowly done in by
a variety of nasty enemies—owls, hunger, disease, bloodthirsty hounds,
and even each other. There's another animated version that exists that
would've saved me from the week's worth of nightmares and tears, but
unfortunately it arrived nine years too late.
You can check out the rest of Brian's piece here.
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