Joe Dante Shares Rare Images from the Darker Version of ‘Gremlins’

It’s no secret that Joe Dante’s Gremlins was originally written as a much darker film than it ended up being, with infamous scenes including Billy’s mom getting beheaded and his dog being eaten by the Gremlins ultimately being axed from the script before production began. The beloved holiday classic of course ended up being a […] The post Joe Dante Shares Rare Images from the Darker Version of ‘Gremlins’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Jan 27, 2025 - 01:59

Joe Dante Shares Rare Images from the Darker Version of ‘Gremlins’

It’s no secret that Joe Dante’s Gremlins was originally written as a much darker film than it ended up being, with infamous scenes including Billy’s mom getting beheaded and his dog being eaten by the Gremlins ultimately being axed from the script before production began. The beloved holiday classic of course ended up being a PG-rated movie, but even that final version of the movie proved to be a little too much for some family audiences at the time.

As director Joe Dante himself has explained, “I think people were upset… They felt like they had been sold something family friendly and it wasn’t entirely family friendly.”

In fact, Gremlins is one of the movies that led the MPAA to create the PG-13 rating in 1984, a new rating somewhere between PG and R that felt a bit more suited to a movie like Gremlins.

This whole ordeal is explored in-depth in Kyle Conley’s YouTube documentary How Horror Created the PG-13, which provides “a history of how Spielberg productions Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins caused such a firestorm, the MPAA created a new rating.”

The video, which you’ll find embedded below, features fresh insights from Joe Dante, and what’s particularly interesting about the video is that Dante provided Conley with a never-before-seen image from a moment that ended up on the Gremlins cutting room floor. It’s shared within the video, providing a rare insight into a darker version we could’ve gotten.

Conley explains to BD, “Joe presented me with something very special, a still image of the original death of Glynn Turman removed after the MPAA nearly gave the film an R.”

‘Gremlins’ (1984)

Glynn Turman played Roy Hanson in Gremlins, the biology teacher at Kingston Falls Middle School who gets killed by the Gremlins. Originally, Billy Peltzer discovers his dead body with multiple syringes sticking out of his face and torso, a reveal that didn’t end up making it into the movie. Instead, Billy discovers the teacher’s body with a single syringe sticking out of his rear end in the final cut, a decidedly less sinister take on the original reveal of his corpse.

Joe Dante explains in Conley’s new video, “The science teacher is one of the first victims of the Gremlins. He had previously upset one of the other Gremlins by poking him with a syringe. So the revenge that the Gremlins take on him is to stick him with a syringe. In the movie, it’s just sticking out of his rear end. But we shot a scene of his face covered in syringes. And it was very creepy. We shot that, it was in the preview [screening], and it was suggested that it would be better to not have that in the picture. I can’t regret anything not being in that movie.”

Another shot excised from the final cut of Gremlins gave us a better look at the Gremlin stabbed to death by Lynn Peltzer (Frances Lee McCain) in the Peltzer kitchen, the monster clutching a knife that’s embedded in its chest with green blood pouring from the wound. Dante has also released that deleted shot (seen below), and he’s selling prints in his online shop.

You can watch Kyle Conley’s full exploration of Gremlins‘ darker side below, which features a colorized recreation of what Roy Hanson’s death reveal would have originally looked like.