Charlie Sheen’s Breakout Film Turned PG-13 Into a Global Standard

Here is a fun bit of ratings history: the first movie the MPAA ever released in theaters with a PG-13 was not some grisly horror flick or a sweaty cop thriller. It was a teen guerrilla-war fantasy starring Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen. Yep, 1984's Red Dawn got there first — even though another film technically earned the rating before it.

How we ended up with PG-13 in the first place

Back in the early 80s, a bunch of PG movies were getting away with, well, a lot. The outcry peaked in 1984 after scenes like Mola Ram tearing a heart out in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and a gremlin exploding in a microwave in Gremlins. Add in PG releases like Poltergeist and Sixteen Candles slipping in content that made parents grumble, and the pressure was on.

So on July 1, 1984, the MPAA added a middle lane between PG and R: PG-13. The idea was simple — if your kids are under 13, you probably want to be there for this.

Who got PG-13 first? That depends on what you mean by "first"

The first film to actually receive a PG-13 rating was Garry Marshall's The Flamingo Kid. But its release was delayed. That opened the door for John Milius's Red Dawn to hit theaters ahead of it, making Red Dawn the first movie American audiences could actually buy a ticket to and see with the new label on the poster.

So why did Red Dawn land PG-13?

On paper, it does not look like a problem movie: it follows a group of high schoolers fighting off a Soviet-led invasion and trying to stave off World War III. Your leads are teenagers played by Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, and C. Thomas Howell. There is no nudity, and nobody even drops the f-word.

But very early on, Swayze's character has Howell's character drink a cup of fresh deer blood as a bonding ritual after a kill. And once the bullets start flying, they basically never stop. John Milius does not do mild — he co-wrote Apocalypse Now with Francis Ford Coppola (and earned an Oscar nomination for it) and directed Arnold Schwarzenegger in the very violent Conan the Barbarian.

There is also a wild behind-the-scenes wrinkle: Milius took the project over from Kevin Reynolds after a recommendation from former Secretary of State Alexander Haig. Milius promptly reframed it as an all-out World War III scenario. Released in the thick of the Cold War, the movie played to patriotic crowds who wanted to see the U.S. hold the line against the U.S.S.R. Even then, plenty of folks side-eyed the PG-13 and thought it was too soft.

The pushback: should it have been rated R?

Marketing-wise, the new rating was a gift. PG-13 made Red Dawn feel like an event, and it worked — the movie earned $38 million on a $17 million budget. But the same advocates who wanted a stricter system in the first place argued Red Dawn still got off easy. In modern terms, it would likely be an R.

"134 violent scenes per hour."

That is how Thomas Radecki, head of the National Coalition on Television Violence, described the movie to The New York Times. It even nabbed a Guinness World Record at the time for averaging two violent acts per minute. Radecki used Red Dawn as Exhibit A in his campaign against the ratings status quo. A year later, an R-rated juggernaut — Sylvester Stallone's Rambo: First Blood Part II — took the violence crown. Meanwhile, PG-13 stuck, and the system spread internationally as the go-to standard.

Red Dawn (1984) quick stats

• Director: John Milius
• Producers: Buzz Feitshans, Barry Beckerman, Sidney Beckerman
• Box office: $38 million on a $17 million budget
• Rotten Tomatoes: 48%
• IMDb: 6.3/10
• Streaming: Red Dawn (1984) is now on HBO Max

Bottom line: Red Dawn did not invent PG-13, but it was the first movie audiences saw with it, and it immediately put the new label to the test. For a film with no sex or swearing, it sure pushed the violence envelope hard. Did the MPAA get it right? You tell me.