10 Smutty Movies Which Somehow Got Rated PG In The 1980s

3. Dragnet (1987)

Though rated PG-13 in the US, this action-comedy update of the 1960s TV cop show arrived in the UK two years before the 12 certificate was introduced. As such, Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks' colourful adventure was passed PG - and though minor cuts were made, most of the smut remained intact. Friday and Streebeck's investigation takes them to the clearly Playboy Mansion-esque home of a pornographic magazine editor, where scantily clad women abound and much discussion of pornography ensues (can films even say 'pornography' in a PG movie now?) Nor does the sex talk stop there, as elderly landlady Kathleen Freeman spouts all manner of eyebrow-raising profanities in her testimony to the cops (it's doubtful 'jizz-bucket' would fly in a contemporary PG), and Streebeck at one point subjects a suspect to testicular torture with a drawer. There is also the matter of Alexandra Paul being near-constantly referred to as 'The Virgin Connie Swail,' but it's not as if virgin's a dirty word. Most resolutely non-PG, however, is the strip club scene. Such sequences seem more or less obligatory in 80s cop movies, but we tend not to expect them in films deemed family friendly. Okay, so the stripper in question has pasties on, but it seems likely this scene alone would be enough to get a 15 today. However, the only cuts ever made by the BBFC were to the film's brief fight scene involving nunchucks, which (somewhat absurdly) were forbidden by the chief censor at time.