The Lost Boys

Directed by Joel Schumacher

1987

Recently divorced mother Lucy Emerson (Dianne Wiest) and her two children Michael (Jason Patrick) and Sam (Corey Haim) move from Phoenix, Arizona to the California seaside town of Santa Carla to start over. Upon arriving there, strange things begin to happen and now her children must face off against a group of teenage vampires.

Without a doubt one of the five greatest vampire movies of all time. I do not think it can be argued otherwise. The Lost Boys used elements of the vampire myth and even Peter Pan to create something unique. How this amazing film never got an immediate sequel and had to settle for those two direct to video sequels I do not know.

The late Joel Schumacher hit it out of the park here. He gave us a dark fantasy that was one of the most original takes on the vampire film genre to ever hit the screen. It is just an amazing movie. Eventually he lost a step or two but here he made some real 80s magic.

Jamie Gertz was every guy’s 80s crush and here she is just so perfectly cast as the vampiress Star. She is mysterious and intriguing to Michael. And Kiefer Sutherland is iconic as the spikey haired and diabolical David who is the teenage head of the vampires.

This is also a movie that features the duo known during the era as the Two Coreys (Corey Haim and Corey Feldman). They were the heart and soul of Tiger Beat and the teen girl world. They played very well off of each other here.

The Frog Brothers (Corey Feldman-Edgar Frog and Jamison Newlander-Alan Frog) were a great duo in and of themselves in this movie. I think a lot of us knew some siblings or even two close friends that were just weirder than most and that is what the Frog Brothers are.

Barnard Hughes plays the slightly spacey and more than a bit quirky Grandpa. The punchline to the whole movie is that Grandpa apparently knew about the vampires the whole time. If you remember early in the movie Grandpa says “Well, now, let me put it this way. If all the corpses buried around here were to stand up all at once, we’d have one hell of a population problem” which on the surface kind of appears to darkly reference the missing people in the town but not directly vampires. However the film is capped off by Grandpa saying “One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach; all the damn vampires.” He knew the whole time!

Edward Herrmann was the go-to yuppie, nondescript guy of the era. Here is no different as he was cast as video store owner Max who is a potential love interest for Lucy. One of the best twists of any movie I saw in my youth came when it was revealed Max was the actual big bad. Dianne Wiest was making a bit of a career at the time playing moms. I dare say she was “America’s movie mom” at the time.

This is a classic of the vampire genre. It is like few other films before or since and has a special something that cannot really be duplicated.