Have you ever moved to a new town and found yourself in the local restaurant/corner store/big box outlet where the people who work there warn you about some of the town’s current residents being vampires?  No?  Then consider yourself lucky.  What would you do with that knowledge though?  You could move away for one.  Maybe you could just hang garlic around the entrances and windows of your home and become a shut-in at night and live in constant fear.  Or you could just go and hunt them down with the resident vampire hunters and take the more proactive route.  The latter is just a little bit harder than it sounds and there is a good chance you will just get yourself killed, but at least you will be doing everyone a favour.  By the killing of the vampires, not actually dying yourself.

The Lost Boys is a film released in 1987 about one such occurrence, directed by Joel Schumacher and starring a number of young actors who would go on to bigger and better things. At least most of them anyways.  The movie is much like Fright Night which was released just two years earlier with a good mix of horror and comedy, but unlike that movie, this film features a more 1980s new wave/punk/rock ‘n roll vibe that gives it that feeling of being a bit more dangerous and rebellious.  Schumacher uses that feeling to his advantage by pushing that horror element and that edgy feeling as far as he can go, while still delivering a picture that most kids would still be able to go and see and also be enjoyed by the masses.

Kiefer Sutherland stars as David, the leader of a gang of hooligans who are always up to no good.  They dress like punks and nogoodniks, they smoke and drink and even do drugs and the nice people of Santa Carla do not like having them in their midst.  But there is not much that the people can do and so they suffer them.  Moving to town is Michael played by Jason Patric, his little brother Sam portrayed by Corey Haim and their mom, the talented Diane Wiest.  They are as white-bread a family from small-town America as can be, though Michael is looking to act out and rebel just a little bit.  Out on the town one night, Michael meets Star, David’s girlfriend and they hit it off.  Soon Michael is hanging out with David and his gang of toughs and doing things he thought he would never do.  Eventually, he finds he is turning into a vampire after drinking David’s blood, while Sam and his new friends, the Frog Brothers, soon discover they are going to have to put a stop to it by killing off David and his clan of vampire friends.  It is a thing that is far easier said than done.

Jason Patric is good as Michael, but he is just really filling a fairly generic role that anybody could have and is not as dynamic or exciting as the character that Kiefer Sutherland played, or even that of Corey Haim’s.  Sutherland on the other hand always plays a good bad guy.  He does the good guy role justice such as in 24, but it is almost like a predisposition for Sutherland to excel as the villain you love to hate.  From Stand by Me to A Few Good Men to A Time to Kill to the fairly maligned Pompeii, Sutherland plays a bad guy better than almost anyone else out there.  Those with a keen eye will also notice that a member of David’s gang is played by Alex Winter, the actor who played Bill S. Preston Esq. in the Bill and Ted movies.

The Frog Brothers

Corey Haim is good in the role and you can see some of that comedic timing that will serve him well in future films. Haim teams up in this movie with his frequent collaborator Corey Feldman who stars as Edgar Frog, one of the infamous Frog Brothers who work in a comic book store, but have a keen interest for killing vampires.  The Frog Brothers know all there is to know about the extermination of the vampire race and while they might sound like a serious couple of guys, they actually provide much of the comedy relief in the film.  Feldman is on top of his game here and actually quite brilliant, as it was in this period of his life that he did a lot of his best work.  Other notable stars in the film are Jami Gertz as Star, Edward Herrmann as Max and Tim Capello as the oiled up bodybuilder who also happens to be the most passionate saxophone player ever seen on film.

I’m a vampire!

Credit goes to the special and visual effects people as well as the makeup department for doing such a great job on the vampires and making them seem so realistic.  Without them the film could have ended up being a train wreck as it only takes one thing to break the narrative and jolt you back to the real world (looking at you Mummy Returns [2001] and I Am Legend [2007]).  Looking back at this film today, the effects will not seem as revolutionary as what you are used to seeing currently, but for the time, they were quite excellent and still hold up even after all these years.

The greatest thing about this movie is that while it does walk that line between horror and comedy and Schumacher makes it as serious as he can, it does not take itself too seriously which is why the film is so brilliant.  You know without a doubt that you are in for a good time when the shirts that Corey Haim wears are louder than anything in the entire film.  In the end, The Lost Boys is a fun and thrilling horror movie about vampires that will have you glued to your seat with a little something for everybody in it. And while the movie does scream 1980s, from the music to the clothes and everything in-between, it has a great script and tells a good story, written by Janice Fischer, James Jeremias and Jeffrey Boam specifically, but most importantly, it keeps you entertained.

4.5 out of 5