GenX didn’t just watch scary movies. We were almost raised by them. Jaws was PG. Poltergeist was PG.

Added: 2026-06-04

[00:00:00]Another reason Generation X is just different than the generations before and after us, the movies we got to watch. Now, before Gen X, horror movies were mostly treated like be movie stuff.

[00:00:11]Yeah, eventually you got your Hitchcock, your psycho, your birds, but that wasn't the same thing as the modern era of horror that showed up right as we were growing up. I'm talking about movies like The Exorcist in 1973 and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 1974.

[00:00:29]Then came Jaws in75, which by the way was rated PG. PG. A movie about a shark eating people at the beach was rated the same as something your teacher could roll into the classroom on a cart after lunch. And it it wasn't just Jaws.

[00:00:46]Poltergeist was PG2. Poltergeist, a movie where a little girl gets sucked into another dimension through the television. A clown doll tries to murder a child. A guy hallucinates peeling his own face off and a suburban swimming pool turns into skeleton soup. PG. Then you had Halloween, Friday the 13th. All those movies becoming normal movies. By normal, I mean normal for us. And we were watching these movies way younger than we should have been. Some of us saw them in theaters because no one was checking anything. And some of us saw them when they hit TV. Halloween came out in 1978 and I was 8 years old. And although I don't remember seeing it in the theaters, I'm pretty sure I did see it on television. And when it did come to television, they slapped a little Parental guidance suggested warning on it. Like that was supposed to scare me away. Please. To a Gen X kid. Parental guidance suggested it was a gift wrapping with a bow. It was a windowless white van with candy painted on the side. It drew us in. And yeah, they edited out the worst parts for television. But let me tell you something. taking out the worst parts and then letting a 9-year-old's imagination fill in the blanks wasn't doing me any favors. Now, for generations after us, things changed because PG-13 became a thing, and movie theaters actually started IDing kids for R-rated movies. Suddenly, people started caring about children. I remember my oldest daughter coming home one night at 15, and I said, "I thought you were going to the movies." And she goes, "I was. They wouldn't let us in." I said, "Do what?" She said, "The movie? They were checking IDs at a theater. Dude, I didn't get IDed buying beer and I could get a pack of cigarettes at the age of eight with nothing but a note.