No. 10: THE LOST BOYS

Reviewed by Sam Hatch

AS THIS IS PART OF A RETRO NOSTALGIA BINGE AS OPPOSED TO A TRADITIONAL REVIEW, THERE MAY BE SPOILERS PRESENT IN THE TEXT.

Wow. I lived, ate, breathed and probably pooped Lost Boys for an extended period of time. Though I can't say I was always into the idea - I remember sitting at the kitchen table during the summer of '87 listening to the radio (my Oingo Boingo tape had ended, and it was Good For Your Soul in case you were wondering) while I was working on building a model kit replica of a giant robot from the Orguss anime series. Now you know why the chicks were so into me. But back to the story, I remember the radio aggressively promoting the release of The Lost Boys, and giving away tickets to a promo screening. I thought it sounded dumb, so I finished my model and skipped the film in theaters entirely. Oh, how silly young unknowing Sam was.

Cut to the following year, when HBO was finally premiering it, and I just happened to leave the channel on for a bit. Soon, I found myself watching attentively, and by the time Corey Haim exhorted "My own brother - a goddamn shitsucking Vampire" I knew I was in the presence of one of the greatest films of all time.

For the uninitiated, The Lost Boys takes the J.M. Barrie notion of independent vagabond children and simultaneously applies it to a high school template and twists it into a tale of vampires. The film (scripted by the late Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade screenwriter and Brisco County Jr. co-creator Jeffrey Boam) follows the lives of moody Jim Morrison lookalike Michael Emerson (Jason Patrick) and his goofy new-wave younger brother Sam (Haim). Their mother Lucy (Diane Wiest) is going through a nasty divorce, so she uproots the family and moves them to the fictional California town Santa Carla (announced as the 'Murder Capital of the World' by some roadsign graffiti) to stay with her father, a delightful old coot played by Barnard Hughes.

Santa Cruz is the stand in for the film's town, and with its boardwalks, amusement parks and eclectic citizens, it becomes a character in itself. It isn't long before Sam and Michael work their way to the local hangouts (and see a concert by Tina Turner's heavily muscled sax player Tim Cappello!) and meet Jami Gertz' Star and the odd little boy Laddie whom she hangs out with. Michael is instantly smitten with her, but unfortunately Jack Bauer, I mean Kiefer Sutherland as David has already staked (get it?) his claim on her. His gang of rock star/biker friends (including Bill and Ted star Alex Winter) invite Michael to a little motorcycle race and eventually try to involve him in their clique.

Sam meanwhile has more interest in the local comic book shop, run by two teen soldier-of-fortune wannabes while their hippy parents are busy snoozing. Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander play Edgar and Allen Frog, and supply plenty of comic relief (epecially with Feldman's ridiculously low tough guy voice) as they try to inform Sam that his new hometown is really peopled with hordes of nosferatu.

And wouldn't you know it, once Michael has been brought to David's secret hideout (an awesome set which is supposed to be the mangled lobby of a once-opulent hotel that was damaged during an earthquake) he is offered the opportunity to drink from a bejeweled bottle of plasma. David also rejoices in playing vampire mind tricks by changing Chinese takeout food into maggots and worms. And when Keifer busts out with lines like "Maggots, Michael. You're eating maggots, how do they taste?", he is nothing less than awesome. Must be the gravitas...

Michael's descent into vampirism is a cool allegory on 'wild' teen behavior, as his mother thinks that he's gone girl crazy and subsequently fallen into a drug-induced stupor. Though she herself has been tempted by the other sex, as she finds herself courted by Edward Herrmann's video store manager Max, who her children suspect as the leader of Santa Carla's vampire community. Grandpa (an eccentric taxidermist who loves his TV Guide but owns no TV, and likes to start his classic automobile but not drive it) soon starts spending plenty of late nights out as well, as he is apparently wooing a local widow with his taxidermy handiwork and fence-building skills.

All of the family relationships are wonderfully written, as Boam deflty weaves in the elements of vampirism into traditional familial dysfunction issues. Eventually Sam and Michael's individual story threads merge as the younger brother finds he must help save his big bro from a life of vein suckling. The Frog brothers are dragged into the fold to help save the day with their extensive vampire lore (learned from comic books, no less!), but are they a match for Keifer's vampire crew? In another witty parallel, their quest to kill the vampires plays like a bunch of high school freshmen trying to best a group of supercool seniors.

The Lost Boys was also an interesting entity in the way that it evolved into a teen/horror/comedy. Much like Big Trouble in Little China, it was a groundbreaking amalgam that managed to work like gangbusters. Sam's story is chock full of humour and awesome one liners ("Death by Stereo!"), but Michael's thread is a much darker one. When David's vampires take on a group of beach bum skinheads, the ensuing bloodbath is truly terrifying, and can match the intensity of many other full-bore horror films. Not to mention that you won't be able to ever hear Run DMC's version of Walk this Way the same way again. There have been plenty of similar films since then, but The Lost Boys pulled it off effortlessly. It still informs and influences modern work, and one scene in particular (in which the vampire youths dangle from a bridge and fall off into a foggy miasma as a train passes overhead) has been copied quite often. It also has one of the best endings I have ever seen.

And speaking of copying, damn did I try to emulate Keifer's character. I remember going to the Eastern States Exposition (an overblown county fair we New Englander's call 'The Big E") in '88, and buying a long black trenchcoat and piles of military medals so I could look like David. I then strolled around the fair's amusement park feeling like a vampiric badass. Unfortunately, my parents were with me, so I didn't pick up any girls. But I would have otherwise, I swear... *cough*

The Lost Boys also had one of my favorite soundtrack albums, and I had copies on vinyl and tape. Inxs and Jimmy Barnes had some rousing numbers, but the one track that I went nuts over was the Gerald McMann tune Cry Little Sister which played over the opening credits. I even used it briefly as the opening music for my early 90s metal band (also called The Lost Boys for a while).

And I wasn't the only one obsessed with this film. As East Coasters dominated by West Coast culture, my friends and I somehow felt like we belonged in the wrong corner of the world. But damned if we didn't pretend that we lived in Santa Cruz, skateboarding every day until nightfall. The Lost Boys was like crack to us. Fellow band mates, schoolmates and friends from the neighborhood were all devotees, and I swear there was a period in which we would go to my house after school and watch the video every freakin' day! (That, and the Bones Brigade skate video The Search for Animal Chin, but that's a story for another day) Though even after the umpteenth viewing, none of us could suss out why Haim's character had both a Reform School Girls movie One-sheet in his room and a poster of a partially clad, very sweaty Rob Lowe.

Videowise, I graduated from my taped-off-HBO VHS copy to an old pan and scan Laserdisc. Sadly, there was a widescreen copy in print but I couldn't get my hands on one. When the widescreen DVD came out, I was actually quite happy to see it in scope with a 5.1 surround mix. (On a home theater geek side note, when I built custom mattes for my old 4:3 TV to help make the letterbox bars even blacker, this was the first DVD I chose to watch with this new enhancement solution.) But luckily The Lost Boys proved to be another fan favorite that would finally receive quality studio attention. Warner Bros. eventually released a great double disc version that has director commentary and some fan-centric documentaries.

It's hard to remember that Joel Schumacher wasn't always a hack nipple-obsessed director (Falling Down is another great movie he helmed), so don't let his name scare you away from checking this out if you haven't yet. He and Keifer would later reteam for the college-kids-turned-death-junkies flick Flatliners, but I was always hoping they would do a Lost Boys 2. Superfans knew that David didn't die at the end of the film (he wasn't staked by wood, it didn't look like his heart was punctured, and he didn't disappear or try to take someone with him), and we were dying to see a sequel. Unfortunately, Jason Patrick started his period as a 'serious' actor and stated unequivocally that he would have nothing to do with a sequel. So no Michael, but what about the other characters?

In the early nineties I picked up an unproduced script (uncredited, though some say it was possibly written by Joss Whedon) for what would have been Lost Boys 2 (or The Lost Girls), which was actually a very fun read that evoked the original (the bridge jumping scene evolves into an event where initiates fly off of a speeding rollercoaster car) yet reworked it enough to keep it fresh. Sadly, I will have to settle for rereading the script, for it would have needed to be filmed shortly after the original to work.

BACK/SAMLAND