The Most Inappropriate PG Movies Of All Time

Remember the good old days when most mainstream movies only had PG and R ratings (with the occasional G or very rare X/NC-17)? At this point, the answer to that is probably not, thanks to the arrival of the PG-13 rating in 1984. The release of two movies that year, "Gremlins" and "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," led to the creation of this new rating. For decades, there was a pretty major gap between "family friendly" and "adults only" when it came to what you could find at the theaters. Nowadays, that's no longer the case, but some movies still slip by the rating board and wind up in the wrong category.

Whether it's because the rating didn't exist yet or the MPAA rating board pulled a fast one, the movies on this list never got the PG-13 rating they likely deserved. From the 1960s to the 2010s, these movies are the raunchiest and most violent movies that ever got a PG rating. We've deemed each of these releases as totally inappropriate for children. Some of them might even offend or gross out the adults in the room as well.

Director Steven Spielberg was the one who first suggested the PG-13 rating to the MPAA in 1984, but "Jaws" came out in 1975, nearly a decade before the idea occurred to him. Even for its time, this horror classic looked and felt like an R. The bloody shark attacks leave a trail of gore that's highly inappropriate for kids. Highlights include a girl's hand showing up on the beach missing one finger, a blood-covered leg floating in the ocean, and blood clouds in the water.  

There's also a ton of inappropriate language and profanity, as well as some brief nudity and mildly inappropriate sexual humor. Even putting the visuals and inappropriate language aside, there's still the fact that "Jaws" would be scary to any young child, especially in its unbearably tense final act. 

"Who Framed Roger Rabbit" is a revolutionary feat of melding animation and live action. The Zemeckis classic is an undeniably great movie, but we're not so sure it's appropriate for young audiences.

For starters, there's some questionable language, including quotes like, "The problem is I got a 50-year-old lust and a 3-year-old dinky," and, "Whatta you know, you dumb broad?" There's also Eddie's (Bob Hoskins) alcoholism, as he's frequently shown taking a swig from a bourbon bottle. And does anyone remember a baby smoking a cigar? There's definitely an overlap there of troubling things that wouldn't make it into a PG movie today. There's also a quite disturbing scene depicting Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd) melting into a puddle.

Then of course there's also the Jessica Rabbit situation. It doesn't take a genius to see why that eye-popping character design might be a tad inappropriate for kids. She is an icon in the pantheon of overly sexualized and inappropriate kids' movie characters.

Look, we all grew up watching "The Neverending Story," but how many of us can say it didn't kinda mess us up? This was many kids' first exposure to dark fantasy, and it got very dark indeed. 

"The Neverending Story" is a fairytale about a little kid (Barret Oliver) caught up in the story of another kid on a great adventure. This meta-narrative hook makes it a timelessly engaging movie, but that's not why this is inappropriate for kids. Like "Lord of the Rings" and "Game of Thrones," this story dives deep into death, violence, and heartbreak, and doesn't forget to populate the world with scary monsters and a creepy amorphous force known only as "the Nothing."

However, nothing we've found in Middle-Earth or Westeros is as tragic and scary as the scene in which Atreyu's (Noah Hathaway) beloved horse Artax unexpectedly — and slowly — drowns in the appropriately named Swamp of Sadness. This moment of sadness is sure to impact any kid. Heck, we'll admit this moment still makes us cry even as adults.

Just because a movie is given an okay-for-kids rating it doesn't mean that it's actually something they'd actually be interested in seeing. What little kid would want to sit through this 1981 romantic comedy about two spoiled, middle-aged rich people? Maybe it was given the PG rating because producers thought kids would relate to the spoiled children these characters act like.

Some well-meaning parent or confused child might have popped this one in the DVD player a few times, but this "Arthur" has nothing in common with the beloved PBS series based on Marc Brown's books about kid aardvarks besides its name. This "Arthur" concerns an obnoxious alcoholic (Dudley Moore), who's literally falling-down drunk throughout the movie, and his heiress fiancée (Liza Minelli). Sometimes the drunkenness is played for laughs, and sometimes for tears. There's also a scene where Arthur is in bed with a prostitute who talks about how she was molested as a child. This is some stuff that it's better to show your kids after having certain talks.

"Watership Down" is an animated movie about cute little bunnies, but it is decidedly not a movie geared toward tiny tots. Based on the novel by Richard Adams, it's about a bunch of rabbits who, attacked by predators, must escape their warren and find a new home while avoiding more attacks by other animals (and humans). "Watership Down" is closer to "Grave of the Fireflies" than any Disney movie in terms of its dour approach to its subject matter, save maybe "Bambi."

While the rabbits aren't massacred in totality, many of them die on the way to freedom in bloody, gory detail: a rabbit caught in a snare coughs up blood, another has its ears torn off, yet another is shot and has a bloody bullet hole in its leg for the rest of the movie. Other rabbits are even hit by a train. That's all just a prelude to the extended bunny blood fiesta that serves as the film's climax, which includes one rabbit tearing the throat out of another rabbit, leaving a pulpy mess with blood pouring out of what used to be its neck.

Baseball-loving kids might want to check out "The Bad News Bears," a classic Little League comedy from the '70s, but parents should steer their children away from it. It's right there in the name: this is bad news. The basic premise of the movie — a cranky, alcoholic former minor leaguer named Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau) grudgingly agrees to coach a Little League team, drinking his way through games — is a little much for young viewers. Coach Buttermaker loves to get a little loaded and drive the kids on his team around, even offering them a beer or two along the way. Matthau's hilarious, and in some ways a great leader for his ragtag team of misfits, but he's no role model, and drinking and driving probably shouldn't be presented to child viewers as a harmless gag.

The main unseemly, not-quite-PG stuff in "The Bad News Bears" is the language. While an utterance or two of the F-word would've led to an "R" rating, the movie carefully skirts the usage of that particular word, opting instead for two dozen or so other cuss words, primarily uttered by the kids, who are also seen smoking and gambling. All of this put together would have earned a PG-13 in a more discerning time.

The second "Indiana Jones" movie adopts a significantly darker tone than the Saturday serial throwback style of "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Still, "Temple of Doom" garnered a PG rating despite some deeply unsettling set pieces, many of which involve children. Kids are slave workers in a mine, for example, which might not be as big a deal as the eating of monkey brains, or a scene in which the Thuggee high priest Mola Ram (Amrish Puri) rips a man's still-beating heart right out of his chest.

After "Gremlins" and "Temple of Doom" were released, the MPAA created the PG-13 rating. Steven Spielberg, who produced "Gremlins" and directed "Temple of Doom," is most commonly associated with the idea. Before PG-13, the rating system considered all children, from babies up to 17, to essentially be the same audience. A PG-13 rating acknowledged that there was room to protect younger viewers while allowing adolescents access to more mature fare.

The 1978 "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" remake is one of the most disturbing PG movies to ever hit cinemas (the 1956 original, though plenty creepy, isn't quite so visually shocking, and pre-dates the MPAA rating system). Moments of blood, gore, and terror punctuate this thriller and will leave even a seasoned adult uneasy as the credits roll.

The premise itself — mysterious organisms from space start killing and replacing people — is nightmare-inducing, but it's the images within that really put "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" over the line. Ever seen a human's face on a dog's body? You never forget that type of thing. There is also the issue of the film's haunting ending. Even if a kid can somehow get through the supernatural and grotesque alien pods unfazed, the psychological impact of the conclusion might keep them up at night. 

While the "Pink Panther" movies are fully in the realm of slapstick, there is a lot of implied and suggested sex in this particular sequel. "The Pink Panther Strikes Again" is the fifth in the original series starring Peter Sellers as the clumsy Inspector Jacques Clouseau. Investigating the kidnapping of a nuclear physicist takes Clouseau around the world and into many suggestive situations.

At one point, Clouseau goes to a nightclub drag performance to investigate the disappearance. This isn't inherently inappropriate, but Clouseau makes some ignorant remarks about the character's gender and presents as outwardly hostile toward Jarvis (Michael Robbins) just because he is in drag.

As he is being chased by assassins, there are seduction attempts made on Clouseau by a Russian operative named Olga. A running joke where two people undressing to have sex get interrupted leads to some mild nudity. Still, nudity in a sexual situation is arguably too inappropriate for such a deceptively silly flick.

"Dragonslayer" is a dark fantasy romp produced by none other than Disney (the now-megacorp doesn't hold the distribution rights; those belong to co-producers Paramount Pictures). The film starred Peter MacNicol and Caitlin Clarke in a more mature take on swords and dragons than Disney's standard fare, despite its PG rating.

There are some equal-opportunity butt shots in "Dragonslayer," but what gets it a place here is the graphic violence. The deaths in this movie are brutal. People get burned alive and eaten by dragons. In one of the film's most extreme sequences, a virgin sacrifice is made.

We don't quite know what director Matthew Robbins was thinking when the movie lingers on the shot of a dead dragon with its organs spilling out. As cheesy as moments like this can seem out of context, others are shockingly dark. If your kid wants to watch a fantasy adventure in a world with dragons, we would recommend not choosing this one.

Believe it or not, the Mike Nichols classic that birthed the line "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. Aren't you?" is rated PG. "The Graduate" is a great movie, but it's also one about seduction and sexual coercion. Not only will the themes go way over a younger audience's heads, but many moments in "The Graduate" would be too inappropriate for any PG movie made today.

Focusing on the love triangle between recent college graduate Ben (Dustin Hoffman), Elaine Robinson (Katharine Ross), and her mother (Anne Bancroft), the film is Simon & Garfunkel-scored odyssey. In her most manipulative moments, Mrs. Robinson tries to seduce Ben by getting him drunk. The film also ends on a mature, complex note that will probably go right over most kids' heads. 

There is also the fact that most of the characters, namely Mrs. Robinson, spend the majority of the movie smoking cigarettes. These days, smoking is certainly one thing that will get a PG movie bumped to PG-13.

This sci-fi flick from 1976 is a certified cult classic. Based on a dystopian novel, "Logan's Run" is certainly mature in its themes. That's fine for a PG-rated movie. What's not so fine is the casual orgy scene, which puts this flick squarely on the "do not, under any circumstances, show to kids" list. 

"Logan's Run" takes place in an isolated city of the future where everyone dies at the age of 30. The scene in question happens after Logan (Michael York) and Jessica (Jenny Agutter) are on the titular run, breaking free. At one point, our two heroic lovers run through an establishment called the "Love Shop," where you can briefly see numerous men and women having sex.

Even without this one short sequence, "Logan's Run" is still inappropriate for kids. While many aspects of the society depicted in the film are progressive about sex, let us consider the fact that Logan only meets Jessica after queuing her up on his futuristic sex partner teleportation device. Within two minutes of meeting her, Logan says, "You're beautiful, let's have sex." It's not exactly behavior you want kids modeling. 

This 1980s sword and board flick became a VHS cult classic, perhaps due to kids being able to rent it and see a great deal of mature content: nudity, dismemberment, general gore, etc. "The Beastmaster" would be sure to land near the top of this list if it were ranked. Take, for starters, the fact that most of the women in this movie are naked at one point or another.

In addition to naked concubines and topless women everywhere, some of the scary ideas in this PG movie go above and beyond. There is a creature that eats gouged-out eyes and human fingers. In the one truly provocative moment from "The Beastmaster," a child is burned alive. This nearly culminates in another child's death, but the movie decides to finally show some restraint for once in its darkest moment.