The chair is against the wall...John has a long mustache...

[desertrunner]

One of the best movies ever made- DR

Red Dawn premiered in theaters 41 years ago today and was the first movie to receive the new PG-13 rating introduced by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in 1984.

[Dan Druff]

This movie was notable for two reasons:

1) It was the first PG-13 film ever. You didn't actually have to be 13, though -- it was just a guidance. I was 12 when the movie came out. I liked PG-13 because the local theater was hit and miss regarding letting me into R rated movies, and I noticed that some R rated movies really didn't deserve that rating, but they had to because they were slightly too raunchy/violent for PG. PG-13 was that compromise -- basically zero restrictions, but guidance to parents regarding suitability (which my parents never cared about anyway).

2) It mostly had a right-wing message, which was unusual for movies, even in 1984. The underlying message of Red Dawn was that the USSR and its communist allies were still a danger, and that a surprise attack on the US homeland wasn't out of the question. At the time, there was a lot of debate about defense spending, with Democrats claiming we were overspending with no identifiable major threat. Republicans at the time countered that the USSR was still a threat, and we had to keep up in the arms race, or face catastrophic results later. Reagan's strategy ultimately ended up being correct, as the USSR's attempt to keep up with our defense spending basically destroyed the Soviet Union, and everything fell apart in 1991. It was for this reason that I was able to tour a KGB interrogation prison in Latvia last month.