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The Lost Boys

USA 1987, Color, 92 min
Director	Joel Schumacher
Screenplay	Jeffrey Boam, Janice Fisher, James Jeremias
Director of Photography	Michael Chapman
Music	Thomas Newman
Gorey Haim	Sam Emerson
Jason Patric	Michael Emerson
Dianne Wiest	Lucy
Edward Herrmann	Max
Kiefer Sutherland	David
Jami Gertz	Star
Corey Feldman	Edgar Frog
Jamison Newlander	Alan Frog
Brooke Mc Carter	Paul
Elly Wirth	Dwayne
Alex Winter	Marko
Chance Michael Corbitt	Laddie
Alexander Bacon Chapman	Greg

After divorcing from her husband Lucy Emerson moves to Santa Clara CA, the city with the most murder cases in the US to live at her fathers place with her two sons Sam and Michael. She soon finds a job at Max's video store, her two sons get to know the local youth. Max becomes friends with two super cool comic freaks, Michael falls in love with beautiful Star and meets the biker gang whose leader, David seems to go with her. In the headquarters of the biker punks Michael makes some unpleasant experiences, but nevertheless he drinks from the bottle offered to him. Soon this turns out to be a mistake of great consequence. The bottle contained vampire blood and Michael gradually turns into a vampire. But never mind ... thanks to their vampire comics his brother Sam and his two new buddies know exactly what to do: the ober-vampire has to be eliminated. In this way Michael as well as his sweetheart star will become normal again, both of them not having drunken human blood yet. So the adolescents impale David and his friends just to find out in the end that, as if we haven't anticipated this from the beginning on, the ober-vampire is somebody else, which is smart Max. But he is killed as well. Happy End.

Well, well, the 80s were indeed a gruesome decade with all that Studioline-Hairstyle, Vanilla pants and brat pack movies. Just imagine a mixture of a Billy Idol look, American wave music, movies such as "The Goonies" and the theme rebellious youth and, of course, vampires. The result will be something like "The Lost Boys", which held a cult status within the gothic scene for quite a while (or even still holds?) for what reason ever. This movie could only be created in the 80s, but well, even if you ignore the styling the movie doesn't become any better. Joel Schumacher is a great dazzler, the photography is done pretty well and the movie has quite some speed to it, but those who have a closer look at it will soon find some major gaps to the already poor story. We have to admit that there's indeed some original ideas, such as the use of holy water pump guns (and this already 10 years before Rodriguez'/Tarantino's "From Dusk Dawn") or the posters with missed persons all over Santa Clara. Furthermore there has never before been vampires smoking or consuming Chinese food.

But if you compare"The Lost Boys" to "Near Dark" by Kathryn Bigelow, shot the same year, it comes off pretty badly, and the excuse that all this is due to the style of the 80s cannot be accepted anymore. The movie lacks atmosphere, there's no creeps. In relation to the vampire classics "The Lost Boys" would be the same as Schumachers "Batman and Robin" compared with the first two "Batman" movies made by Tim Burton: quite nice, but nothing more. Neither the fans of gothic horror nor splatter heads will enjoy "the Lost Boys" to a maximum and it would be best to recommend it to those who have not really lived the 80s and who think that it was a cool time then (which seems to be trendy at the moment). Those who want to experience real horror should try watching TV serials of the 80s, such as "Miami Vice" or "Dallas", uuaaarrgghh...