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  Pushing the Boundaries

PG Horror Movies in the Seventies

By Bob Ignizio and Edward Black 

*Note* Ed and Bob each made their own picks for this article.  The writer responsible for writing about each film is credited at the end of that section.  Bob wrote the introduction to this article and Ed wrote the closing comments. 

Think movies today are more violent than they used to be?  Think the PG-13 rating has been creeping closer and closer to R-rated standards?  Then check out this little history lesson as we revisit the decade that taste forgot, the fabulous seventies.  When these movies were released, kids could go to a theater without adult supervision, sit back, and be engulfed in cheap, lurid thrills.  Show one of these movies to a kid today, and you just might get arrested for child abuse.  

THE HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS (1970) 

This one was a creepy number about Barnabas Collins, a vampire who was recently released from his coffin.  Death ensues and characters suspicions arise.  This was an entertaining movie when I first saw it.  There was a PG rating on the back of the box, but I failed to let that scare me away.  I was soon treated to a lot of vampire neck biting and a load of impalings, including a spectacular one towards the end via crossbow.  It should also be noted that Dick Smith did the FX for this one.  (Ed) 

BLOOD AND LACE (1971) 

Your jaw will drop with disbelief after watching this twisted little flick.  A prostitute and her John are murdered by a masked hammer wielding nutjob.  The prostitute’s teenage daughter then gets sent to an orphanage where discipline involves locking teens up in an attic without food or water, and occasionally even murder.  Vic Tayback (who played Mell on the TV show ‘Alice’) is a cop who wants to help the teenage girl, but his reasons are far from pure.  There’s plenty of violence and gore, but even more amazing are the twisted sexual themes including incest and statutory rape.  Not especially graphic, but this would probably get an ‘R’ just for general tone these days.  ‘Blood and Lace’ is sleazy as they come, but nonetheless a compelling watch.  (Bob) 

CHILDREN SHOULDN’T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS (1972) 

This is basically a low budget ‘Night of the Living Dead’ rip-off directed by Bob (‘A Christmas Story’, ‘Porkys’) Clark.  Clark injects a lot of intentional humor into his film, but there are a few genuinely creepy scenes.  Even scarier are some of the seventies fashions on display - check out the pants on lead actor Alan Ormsby.  Ormsby plays a theatre director who takes his troupe of actors (or “children” as he refers to them) to an island to perform a Satanic ritual involving the blood of unborn children that is supposed to raise the dead.  The spell doesn’t work right away, but once it does the usual zombie carnage ensues.  No graphic gut munching and not a lot of blood, but still more than you’d be allowed to get away with in a PG movie today.  Clark manages to deliver a fairly unique take on the living dead genre, and despite the obvious low budget this is something of a minor classic.  (Bob) 

JAWS (1975) 

I saw this for the first time at my junior high school.  As a treat, the school had rented a print of Spielberg’s horror classic to show to the students.  I’m assuming everyone knows the plot.  A big shark eats people, and Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, and Robert Shaw hunt it down.  The movie starts with a skinny dipping scene.  It’s tastefully done, but you can still see the actress’ breasts and posterior before she becomes shark food.  We also get to see the same girl’s grisly remains.  Then the movie really gets going.  People get munched, including a little kid.  Blood spurts.  Decaying corpses pop into view.  Colorful profanity is bandied about.  Spielberg is too classy a filmmaker to make this gratuitous, but nonetheless this would get at least a PG-13 today, and probably an R. (Bob) 

GRIZZLY (1976) 

Also known as Killer Grizzly, this takes the crown as the best PG rated horror movie of all time.  The box featured a huge, hulking bear towering over a cowering camper.  Above this image, the copy read, "18 feet of man eating terror".  There was no way I could miss this one.  It’s about a huge wild man eating bear loose in the woods.  That's it.  It takes only about 5 minutes for the gore to kick in, as a duo of camperettes are offed by the bear.  He rips off one poor girls arm and slashes them apart with his huge claws.  Later on a bathing beauty is mauled by the bear and a small boy has his leg bitten off.  A man is also bear hugged until he spits up blood.  Definitely some nasty stuff. Undoubtedly, this would receive an R rating if released today.  Small children maimed by a large animal?  Sounds like an R to me.  The director of this movie had quite a horror history directing the legendary ‘Three on a Meat Hook’ and another animals gone mad movie called ‘Day Of The Animals’ in which every animal goes mad, and which is just as good as Grizzly.  (Ed) 

PLANET OF THE DINSOSAURS (1978)  

I first saw this on TV when I was about 5 years old.  It is about a group of astronauts who get lost in space. They have to make an emergency landing on a random planet that happens to look a lot like earth.  It’s not earth though.  As the astronauts soon find out, the planet is filled with dinosaurs.  The acting in this one is a bit hokey, but it hardly takes away from how truly amazing this movie is.  The characters battle the dinosaurs with lasers that look like power drills, but soon find out that those don’t work.  So they take to making their own weapons.  Some parts are a bit talky, but that’s fine because the stop motion animation in here is some of the best I have ever seen.  There is also a lot of unexpected gore and violence, like a half eaten dinosaur, lots of characters being eaten alive, and in one of the greatest scenes ever, a man  is impaled on a dinosaur horn and tossed off the side of a cliff.  We even see his wrecked body hit the ground.  Despite all this, the movie was given a PG rating.  Fans of good stop motion animation should really see this, as the effects here are truly great.  One of my all time favorite movies.  (Ed) 

PROPHECY (1979) 

This was one of the first “modern” horror films I was allowed to watch as a kid.  It’s directed by John Frankenheimer, a respectable filmmaker responsible for flicks like 'Birdman of Alcatraz', 'The Manchurian Candidate' and 'Seven Days in May'.  It would be an understatement to say that ‘Prophecy’ isn’t quite in the same league.  The film concerns a bear that has been mutated due to chemicals from a paper processing plant getting into a woodland stream.  Basically, the monster looks like a grizzly covered in chewed up bubble gum.  Of course it goes on a killing spree.  It’s not that bloody, but probably would still earn a PG-13 nowadays.   It’s not that good, either, but I saw it at just the right time to have some fond feelings for it.  (Bob) 

These movies came from a special time when a movie was a movie and not a reason why someone went out and shot 15 people at their school.  These movies came out in a time when video games weren't the scapegoat for bad parenting.  These movies would never be granted a PG rating today.  These movies, despite the seemingly limited nature of a PG rating, rose to the occasion and delivered the frightening goods to the viewers who were lucky enough to see them, and that is why we recommend them all.