Joe Dante Shares Rare Images from the Darker Version of ‘Gremlins’
It’s no secret that Joe Dante’s Gremlins was originally written as a much darker film than it ended up being, with infamous scenes including Billy’s mom getting beheaded and his dog being eaten by the Gremlins ultimately being axed from the script before production began. The beloved holiday classic of course ended up being a […]
It’s no secret that Joe Dante’s Gremlins was originally written as a much darker film than it ended up being, with infamous scenes including Billy’s mom getting beheaded and his dog being eaten by the Gremlins ultimately being axed from the script before production began. The beloved holiday classic of course ended up being a PG-rated movie, but even that final version of the movie proved to be a little too much for some family audiences at the time.
As director Joe Dante himself has explained, “I think people were upset… They felt like they had been sold something family friendly and it wasn’t entirely family friendly.”
In fact, Gremlins is one of the movies that led the MPAA to create the PG-13 rating in 1984, a new rating somewhere between PG and R that felt a bit more suited to a movie like Gremlins.
This whole ordeal is explored in-depth in Kyle Conley’s YouTube documentary How Horror Created the PG-13, which provides “a history of how Spielberg productions Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins caused such a firestorm, the MPAA created a new rating.”
The video, which you’ll find embedded below, features fresh insights from Joe Dante, and what’s particularly interesting about the video is that Dante provided Conley with a never-before-seen image from a moment that ended up on the Gremlins cutting room floor. It’s shared within the video, providing a rare insight into a darker version we could’ve gotten.
Conley explains to BD, “Joe presented me with something very special, a still image of the original death of Glynn Turman removed after the MPAA nearly gave the film an R.”
