The Lost Boys

The Lost Boys (1987)

Director: Joel Schumacher

Cast: Jason Patric, Corey Haim, Dianne Wiest, Barnard Hughes, Edward Hermann, Kiefer Sutherland, Jami Gertz, Corey Feldman, Jamison Newlander

Writers: Jan Fischer, James Jeremias, Jeffrey Boam

Synopsis:

After a painful divorce, Lucy (Wiest) moves from Phoenix with her two teenage sons, Michael (Patric) and Sam (Haim) to Santa Carla, California. The town is plagued by a number of bad elements and is referred to as the "murder capital of the the world" due to a high concentration of vampires secretly living in the area. Not long after arriving in town, Michael meets David (Sutherland), the leader of a young group of vampires, who tries to get him to join the gang. With the help of his new friends Edgar (Feldman) and Alan (Newlander) Frog, Sam must kill the elusive "head vampire" and free his brother from the curse of vampirism.

First Impressions:

I didn't see this movie until a couple years after it's release. I was around 11 when it was in theaters and I honestly don't remember seeing any TV sports or trailers for it when it came out. In truth, I hadn't even heard of the movie until I saw it for the first time. I was just hitting my teenage years when I finally did see it and I remember that it appealed to me. This was probably due to the fact that it was a bit of a revisionist take on the standard vampire tale but maintained a lot of the mythology that most modern vampire movies do away with.

Story/Direction:

"One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach; all the damn vampires."

As far as I know, this film was the first to explore the idea of contemporary teenage vampires and managed to do it very well. It's actually a pretty interesting concept, how would the average teenager respond to having been given immortality at the cost of their soul. However, the film has an odd tone to it that makes it difficult to categorize. It definitely isn't a horror movie, though there are some creepy scenes in the film. I also wouldn't classify it as an action movie, despite a decent number of good action moments. The film also has a good amount humor in it as well but, again, doesn't go full on into comedy territory either. The movie reminds me of the more recent It: Chapter 2, in that it wasn't entirely sure what kind of movie it wanted to be. Unlike It, however, The Lost Boys manages to mesh the disparate genres together effectively and it all works really well. 

One of the main reasons it works, in my opinion, is down to good directing on the part of Schumacher. After the travesty that was his Batman movies, it's easy to forget that Schumacher was a very accomplished director, with some really good films under his belt and this film could possibly rate among the best of his filmography. It's just a shame that after the Batman films, he seemed to lose whatever mojo he had. 

As for the story itself,  it can be summed up as teenage rebel falls in with a group of vampires and tries to free himself before he turns into a soulless killing machine. Despite the fact that going in, the audience is most likely aware that the movie is about vampires, the film still holds off on revealing that fact until much later in the film. This tactic works really well because up until then, the only insight the audience has into the possible undead presence in the film is revealed by the Frog brothers, who could easily just be loopy. There's even a misdirect scene at the beginning of the second act that appears as though it could open the lid on the whole vampire thing but turns out completely differently. The film also moves along at a brisk pace and there's very little down time to be found. 

Acting:

There was some pretty solid acting talent involved with this film, which included among its cast a two-time Oscar winner, as well as a multiple Golden Globe and Emmy nominee. Sutherland was just at the beginning of his leap to stardom when this came out. Like his previous role in Stand By Me, he once again plays an effective heavy. Like him or hate him, Kiefer has always been able to pull off menacing very well and as David he does a good job with a failry one-dimensional character.

Diane Wiest, the aforementioned Oscar winner, also does a pretty good job as the in the dark mother, Lucy. There's a scene in the movie, after Michael finds out that he's become a vampire, where Lucy tries to have a serious chat with him about what's going on in his life. Obviously, she has no idea that he's dealing with a very real supernatural occurrence and she just thinks that he's dealing with the things that a normal teen has to cope with. In another movie, the scene would just be the standard "Nobody understands what I'm going through!" teenage conversation. However, in this case, it's unlikely that Michael's mother would understand what he's going through,which makes the scene such a wonderful subversion of that well-used trope. Wiest plays the scene with such sincerity that you can't help chuckling at the ridiculousness of it.

I also want to give a shout out to Feldman's performance in the movie, as he often gets underrated due to his previous status as a teen heartthrob. If you compare his portrayal of Edgar Frog with his previous roles as Teddy in Stand By Me and Mouth in Goonies, Feldman displays a good range between those three roles and he should be applauded for it. As Edgar, he plays the incompetent vampire hunter with such confidence that you can't help but root for him, even though he's an idiot. 

There's not much else to call attention to here as far as acting goes. The rest of the cast, including Ed Hermann, Jamison Newlander and Jami Gertz all put in solid if unspectacular work. 

  

Visual/Special Effects:

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it before but one of the cool things about re-watching these old movies and reviewing them is I get to see how filmmakers ever got along without the CGI crutch. More often than not, directors would opt for a minimalist approach letting the audience's imagination do the work for them. This film is no exception, which is good because when dealing with supernatural subject matter like vampires, special effects of some sort are going to be needed. To mimic the flight of the vampires, Schumacher used a first-person perspective with the sound of flapping and the squeals of bats to great effect instead of using wire-work or something similar. The effect works very well and helps keep the vampire reveal under wraps until much later in the movie. Other effects like a vampire's hand catching on fire after being exposed to sunlight and Michael's reflection in a mirror being transparent were all done rather simply, which has allowed the movie to age very well from an effects standpoint.

While some vampire movies would resort to merely sticking in a pair of fangs into an actor's mouth to create a vampire, The Lost Boys uses some pretty good make-up effects to enlarge the creatures' brows and give them longer fingernails, as well as yellowish eyes to complete the effect. All in all, the effects in the movie are done very well, proving that the minimalist approach is still a good way to go

Score/Music:

The music for the film was composed by Thomas Newman but it definitely takes a backseat to the soundtrack, which is filled with contemporary pop and rock hits. In my opinion, The Lost Boys boasts one of the better soundtracks of the decade with songs from, INXS, Roger Daltrey and Echo and the Bunnymen. While I don't think any of the songs from the movie turned out to be big hits on the charts, it was still really fun to go back and listen to the soundtrack in preparation for this post.

Action:

As mentioned, there's not a ton of action in this movie and what's there isn't particularly groundbreaking. There's a pretty decent motorcycle race through the fog, which is fairly intense and the final showdown with the vampires is exciting, if very brief. Even the final fight between Michael and David is fairly subdued. Don't get me wrong, I don't think any of it is particularly bad, it's just there's not a lot to talk about here. If you're looking for an action-packed vampire movie, this isn't really it. 

Final Verdict:
Despite, the film's propensity to switch lanes frequently, I still found The Lost Boys to be a very enjoyable experience. In fact, I probably enjoyed it more this time around than when I originally saw it.