me_irl

Spielberg used a lot of horror coded cinematography on E.T. During the film it flip flops a little between horror and family joyful. So much that in theory it shouldn't work. But when you are dealing with an extraterrestrial being or being manhandled by government scientists and military it is hard not to feel scared, and he conveyed that by showing that for a small child it would be absolutely terrifying. The 80s has a lot of films like this, where marketing and production were confused about whether they wanted these movies to be aimed at children or not. This gave us Gremlins, Terminator, Robocop and others that combined adult jokes, extreme gore and violence, cynic satire, but also toys tie ins, family fun sanitized trailers and marketing, and toy selling TV cartoons. If anything, E.T. is the tamest of the lot and is definitely, decidedly aimed at family audiences. I blame cocaine.

ADD: Just remembered all the sex innuendos and mortgage jokes in Ghostbusters.