Last Updated on July 27, 2021
PG-13. A community that can watch limbs cut off, innards pulled out and monster rape without blinking an eye still gets a collective chill when that hated rating is mentioned. The wailing and gnashing of teeth that can ensue often becomes the stuff of legends and biblical stories.
IT’S GONNA BE PG-13?! ARE YOU F*CKING KIDDING ME?! JUST KILL ME NOW!
In a quiet moment I think we can all admit that the world has never come close to ending because of a PG-13 rating. That said, there are also a lot of uppity pricks out there who like to chirp about why the genre community is stupid for caring about a rating. We’ll give those naysayers the benefit of the doubt and just call them woefully uninformed.
The reason we care is simple – PG-13 horror movies blow ropey goat chunks. Let’s get into why. Then Spit Bullets ’cause I know ya’ll have some opinions on this shite!
Right at the outset we have to deal with the fact that PG-13 is a seriously flawed rating. It was originally created because of movies like INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM and GREMLINS which parents felt were too violent for kids. They were right, and guess what, that’s what an R-rating is for. No offense to Mr. Spielberg, but if you want to have a dude pulling peeps hearts out of their chest then a parent should probably be involved when and if a teen or tweener sees the damn thing. There was never a need for the PG-13 rating, and today it continues in the role it has always had – the Studio’s favorite loophole.
Every time a PG-13 horror movie tanks at the box office you start to hear whispers that horror is dead. Which is stupid because horror is not a blockbuster genre in the first place. You keep your costs low, rely heavily on DVD interest, and occasionally see a superbly creative flick take off in a SAW or BLAIR WITCH PROJECT kind of way. What you do not do is plan to make $100 million profits off a moderately budgeted studio horror pic. Doesn’t work that way. Never has, never will. Each time some bean counter looks at the receipts of the last WB flavor of the week starring scare flick, it makes it harder than ever for an interesting, legit fright film to get green lit.
Am I really going to bitch about casting in this genre famous for bad scripts and worse performances? You bet your ass. PG-13 horror never has a creative idea going for it, so to sell
that shite to teens the producers go out to grab whatever One Tree Creekville starlet they can find to run around looking drunk but not stoned, cute but not sexy, scared but not terrified. Give me Tiffany Shepis or Melantha Blackthorne, hell give me a stripper who just gives her all to the role of Makeout Girl #2, but don’t give me some teen diva who cares more about her Q score than making a good movie.
What do you do when you have an inherently violent premise yet you’re artificially restricted in what you can show? Why you go to the shaky-cam quick cut editing room. There you can create such a senseless jumble of images that the only thing more obtuse than what’s going on is why you even bothered.
Some folks feel that the insistence on nudity in horror is silly. I agree that it is not always appropriate, but for the vast majority of genre pics, a little well placed nakedness is just what the doctor ordered. Why? Because sex and horror go together like peanut butter and chocolate. Both feature a little teasing, some nervous excitement, slowly building tension and an eventual release. If people insisted on a unicorn, or a buffet scene in every flick then it’d be gratuitous, but sex and jublies? That shite belongs, my friends!
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