Lost Boys

A divorced mother moves her two sons and the family mutt from Phoenix, AZ, to Santa Carla, CA, a coastal town where the nighttime scenery is a veritable collage of bonfires, carnival attractions, and seedy shops. The youngest son mourns the loss of a TV set because when there's no TV, there's no MTV. The oldest son lusts after a beautiful girl he sees at a rock concert, and encounters her male friends, a group of leather jacket-clad punks who hang around (or upside down) the decrepit remains of a resort. There, the boys hand him a bottle of tainted Bloody Mary, and the leader eggs him on: "Drink this. Be one of us." The boy drinks, only later to realize he has suffered the worst hangover in history. He can't stand sunlight, has no mirror reflection, is occasionally flying out of windows, and suffers from a aching need to drink anything that is red and rich in plasma. All this just so he can have sex with that girl. However, his younger brother notices the changes, and he can't just hand over a bottle of Clearasil and say "There you are, crater face!" They must do something about the fact that the man of the house is indeed a bloodsucker. What will mom think?

This is not your grandfather's horror movie. THE LOST BOYS (Warner Bros. Pictures; rated R for horror violence, some language and a scene of sexuality; 97 minutes; released in the U.S. on July 31, 1987) stands next to Near Dark, which was released in the same year, as the quintessential vampire movie of the 1980s, although this one not exactly is the best. "Near Dark" was a real subdued gem, and "Fright Night" was earlier and dare I say better. But there was only one truly forgettable bad vampire movie in the 1980s, and I'm sure nobody wants to remember "Graveyard Shift (Central Park Drifter)." In the end, it all boils down to THE LOST BOYS, which updates the fanged lore to a 1987 setting, a hard rock soundtrack, flashy cinematography, dated haircuts, and meditations on peer pressure, sibling rivalry, eternal youth a la "Peter Pan," missing children, and the Coreys. They seemed to have starred in more movies together than Cheech & Chong, but THE LOST BOYS, needless to say, is their best moment.

But the two Coreys, Corey Haim (the man once known as Lucas) and Corey Feldman (he's still Teddy Duchamp to me), didn't surprise me with their on-screen chemistry, which was mostly existent in this film. To be fair, I was more impressed with Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander, who play this movie's Fearless Vampire Killers, or Edgar and Alan Frog. They are like brothers themselves, a couple of comedic siblings who would much rather stake a vampire than brood around in the comic shop they run. Yet they are a naturally funny duo, sort of like the Hope & Crosby or the Abbott & Costello of all contemporary vampire films. They school the movie's youngest leading protagonist in how to spot "The Hounds of Hell," particularly when one of them attacks his mother. They know of certain vampires who hole up in the nation's capital. When they face of against the vampire threat, they become commandos, armed to the teeth with holy water-filled water pistols and decked out in camouflage outfits and face paint, despite the fact that the house they are holing up in is not full of plants.

THE LOST BOYS was the first real great movie in the resume of Joel Schumacher, who previously made "D.C. Cab" and "St. Elmo's Fire." Here, Schumacher exhibits a frenetic style to match the particularly dark, grim, beautiful scenery of Santa Carla, a coastal boardwalk town that would scare Bruce Springsteen. There are plenty of normal people there, but there are also a lot of freaks and geeks, derelicts and do-littles, chicks and pricks. And there's those lost boys, four particular adolescent rogues who look like a hair metal band.

When we first see them, their leader David ends up in a fracas with some girl's boyfriend on the merry-go-round. A security guard breaks them up and sends them away, only to later regret that decision when he is murdered in the parking lot after the lights of the carnival go out. And David is played by the one-and-only Kiefer Sutherland, who starred with Corey Feldman in Stand By Me from 1986 and would be Schumacher's favorite actor later on, starring in three of the director's later movies, including 1990's "Flatliners," which was the only Schumacher film in which he didn't play a full-blown psychopath. Here's where you can see the Kiefer that we know and love, or loathe, depending how much you like your villains. I'm talking the leathery voice, the cigarette in hand, the spiky blond peroxide-tinged hair and beard, and the psychotic grin that could melt your soul faster than you can say "Ace."

It's no surprise that Santa Carla is the "Murder Capital of the World," as Grandpa (Barnard Hughes) tells Lucy Emerson (Oscar-winner Dianne Wiest) and her family as they arrive from Phoenix. Lucy is broke, divorced, and lonely, whilst her two sons, young Sam and the older Michael (Corey Haim and a relatively unknown Jason Patric) are simple carefree youths who are particularly put off by their grandfather's eccentric attitude. He's a man who lies around the front porch playing dead just to surprise his family. He keeps a tip-top automobile in his garage, but he never drives it. Hell, he doesn't even leave the house except on the rare occasion where he takes his weird little wagon out to visit some other widowed lady. And he has a hobby that can best be described as a cross between Norman Bates' taxidermy and Leatherface's taste in skeletal interior decoration (when Michael and Sam walk in on Grandpa's laboratory, Michael reiterates a previous complaint by Sam, saying "Talk about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre!"). I was fearing for the Emerson family mutt, an Alaskan husky they call Nanook, because Grandpa seems to stuff every animal in sight.

Sam and Michael think their grandfather is seriously nuts, but they haven't seen the worst of it. Venturing out into the glamorously skuzzy Santa Carla boardwalk, Michael gets a load of a beautiful teenaged girl named Star (Jami Gertz, who starred in "Solarbabies," which was Jason Patric's starring debut) at a Tim Cappello concert. He pursues her all the way up to the point where she meets up with her four male companions, which are David and his three friends, Paul (Brooke McCarter), Dwayne (Billy Wirth), and Marko (Alex Winter, a.k.a. "Bill S. Preston Esquire"). After attempting to kill him by having him ride his motorcycle over a high cliff, David makes it up to Michael by inviting him into their quarters for some Chinese food and wine. Unfortunately, when Star warns Michael that he's about to drink blood, Michael scoffs. This will be a bad decision, as Mike comes to grips with his growing vampirism and so does his brother Sam, who seeks the assistance of his comic store partners Edgar and Alan Frog in ridding Michael of the bloodsucking bloodline before he's lured by David into making his first killing.

Having become a modest hit at the box office and a popular catalog title in the Warner Home Video list, THE LOST BOYS is a love it or leave it film. Those who admire the film appreciate the fact that the film is outrageously stuck in 1980s overkill, relish the performances, and admire the visual verve of this film. This wasn't the first real movie to mix comedy and horror, especially in a vampire film, when "Fright Night" beat them to the punch two years beforehand. But the mix of genuinely funny situations and throwaway one-liners, as well as some potent and effective terror sequences and vampire FX, definitely end up on a more grand scale than that 1985 movie. And whilst that is a juggling tone for the film, the gags and dialogue mostly complement the horror rather than belittle each other. And for a script that is obviously uneven in some circumstances, screenwriter Jeffrey Boam (who died a few years ago) and story authors James Jeremias and Janice Fischer definitely have the vampire and horror genres pegged. Together with Joel Schumacher, they successfully lift the lore and vampire allure to the decade of mullets and acid-washed jeans, indulging in many visual sleights of hand whilst doing an admirable job of playing most of the film for camp.

But what still gets to me about THE LOST BOYS even to this day is the fact that the movie is quite fun, even from a modern standpoint. The Frog Brothers are still two of the most colorful occult monster mashers even in the age of Buffy, and they give this movie a lot of appeal. Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander supposedly watched enough Chuck Norris and Sly Stallone to get their mannerisms down, and even if they acknowledge that Sam is obviously a fashion victim, they can't help but seem like two boys who've seen one too many midnight movies on TV. They are absolutely serious about their beliefs, and that both actors are likable in their roles makes up for the fact that the movie basically turns into a confrontation around the third act.

Also, the vampires are displayed via some nifty P.O.V. shots captured by Schumacher and acclaimed cinematographer Michael Chapman ("Taxi Driver"). Keeping the vampires mostly off-screen for the first half of the movie builds up the anticipation to a degree where you finally get truly amazed when David and his boys change into the monsters. Greg Cannom has been mostly under-praised for the work he put into developing such scary monsters, and he also makes for several interesting death sequences, including the legendary "death by stereo." The aerial swooping shots are briskly and professionally edited, and they don't seem to take away from the menace at all.

The cast of this film largely contributes to the positives of this film. Aside from the larger-than-life work provided by Kiefer Sutherland, Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander, everyone else has some sort of subtlety that works in their advantage. Jason Patric was afraid of this being an exploitation film a la the "Friday the 13th" and "Elm Street" sequels, but he instills a lot of personality and brotherly compassion into his first most notable movie performance. The rapport he has with Corey Haim, who works well in this film playing the youngest hero with more naturalness than many give him credit for (he was "Lucas" after all), feels authentic and believable. Dianne Wiest had come off her Oscar victory for "Hannah & Her Sisters," and she brings a lot of heart and warmth to the down-to-earth mother who feels estranged from her kids and also tries to build up her life again. And Barnard Hughes simply just chews up the scenery every inch of the way as the Grandpa. Jami Gertz is also very beautiful and sympathetic as the vampire girl, both awkward and desirable and developing some real emotion as Michael's lover. And Edward Herrmann plays Max, the kind and innocent man who courts Lucy and is "mistakenly" seen as a vampire. I was surprised when I finally saw how he fit into the plot.

But that does pose one of many problems with the film. ***SPOILER ALERT*** THE LOST BOYS has a meaty concept to it that feels shortchanged, as the film is eventually a take-off on "Peter Pan," with vampire teens who can remain forever young and lively under a liquid diet and the affections of a surrogate father, who is looking to provide a mom for his boys. Max does end up as the head vampire, yet the whole dynamic between this family of killers is used simply as the means for a final, all-too-brief confrontation between heroes and villain, as well as one of the more mediocre Corey Feldman one-liners. The deleted scenes on the DVD seem to provide a crux of the substance missing from this film, as we get a greater sense of the fact that Max admires Lucy for her motherhood and also another foreboding clue as to where Max fits into David's circle. Furthermore, I may be uncertain about this, but when did the head vampire get to switch off his weaknesses anyway. I believe it was because Michael invited Max, but I still don't think vampires can just turn normal on a dime. Just how did Max end up, as Star puts it at the end, "the secret that David was protecting?" I wish I saw more of David actually admitting that there was a secret instead of goading Michael into joining his clan.

I felt as if I had to piece together the puzzles of the plot myself. The town of Santa Carla is indeed filled with "Lost Boys," missing children whose flyers adorn Santa Carla every which way. I'm supposing that Max did take in four lost boys, and they grew up to be David, Paul, Dwayne and Marko. In fact, when we first see Max in the video store, there's a missing child whom Lucy returns to her parents, which would've been an interesting development and precursor to Max's own motives. Max was dating Lucy into the family just so he could have a mother when he brought Sam and Michael into the fold. But what about the other missing children? How did the "Lost Boys" get together and when did Max become their daddy? And what about the other missing kids? Did they let Max down? The movie doesn't really go into these possibilities, as well as the vampire group's dynamic as brothers under a single father, as much as it could, and it was disappointing.

The final half of the movie is basically "The Goonies" meets "Fright Night," something which was the original intention of Fischer and Jeremias' script as we learn in the DVD supplements, as the resourceful 13-year-olds aid Michael in trying to stop all the existing vampires. Further explorations into Michael's coping with his newfound monstrosity, further encouragement from David, and also some more of the love dynamic between Michael and Star would've been good, as well as some additional insight into the character of Laddie (Chance Michael Corbitt). I wasn't sure for a while whether he was Star's fatherless child or just another stolen young boy.

But the movie has a lot of charm in the fact that the movie is stuck in a 1980s time frame. Joel Schumacher engages in one of his first visual movie exercises (see also "Flatliners" and Phone Booth), and he indelibly crafts some really beautiful moments, including the aforementioned overhead shots of the murders, panning shots of the dark blue Pacific Ocean (this ain't the "Mystic River" though), some beautiful overlapping/dissolving frames and slow motion. The movie loads up on fog in one particular moment when the boys decide to let Michael know what's going on as they play on the railroad tracks (Kiefer Sutherland must have gotten jealous after Corey Feldman was dodging trains in "Stand By Me"). The movie's lone sex scene between Michael and Star even feels steamy and stellar in the short time we see it, tasteful and expertly shot and edited. The fashions and hair, especially on Patric, Gertz and Sutherland, is enough to put a smile on my face. I also found it surprising that Sam's room has three notable posters: one of Molly Ringwald (in a pose from "The Breakfast Club," whose movie poster is on my wall in beside "The Evil Dead" and "Taxi Driver" posters), one of Rob Lowe (done no doubt as a shameless shout-out to the "St. Elmo's Fire" star, but why select the pose which looks like something plucked from the pages of a teen girl's magazine?), and one of the B-movie "Reform School Girls." And there is some really nice gore in this movie, although you wouldn't want to blink during the bonfire massacre sequence.

And I appreciate this film's arena rock soundtrack most of all, one of the first cassettes I bought as a youth. Superstar pop band INXS and Jimmy Barnes (the man who had seven Australian #1 hits) collaborated on two songs, one of them a cover ("Good Times") and the other a full-on original ("Laying Down the Law"), but both of them are pure gold. Liverpool's Echo & The Bunnymen recorded a sleek cover of The Doors' "People Are Strange," produced by the original band's keyboardist, Ray Manzarek. Foreigner lead singer Lou Gramm sings "Lost in the Shadows (The Lost Boys)," a real solid hard rock number that is the second-best theme to the movie, whereas Gerard McMann's certified theme song, "Cry Little Sister," is just too awesome for words. There's also two other covers, with Roger Daltrey of The Who performing Elton John's "Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me" and saxophone man Tim Cappello (who appears in the movie) performing a more upbeat rendition of The Call's "I Still Believe." Thomas Newman wrote the original score, including the prevalent carnival song "To the Shock of Ms. Louise." And even though this song is not on the CD soundtrack, its fun to hear a movie like THE LOST BOYS use the Run DMC meets Toxic Twins anthem "Walk This Way," before it was played to death at every current MTV Video Music Awards show. I only wish that Warner Bros. pulled the same trick they did with "Mystic River" and include a remastered version of the soundtrack as a bonus.

The last time the studio had a crack at THE LOST BOYS on DVD in early 1998, it was a sorry one at best. It presented the movie in both pan & scan and original widescreen on a dual-sided disc, which is now uncommon of Warner's recent DVD releases, but the print was marred by lots of grain, artifacts, and smearing colors, and the 5.1 mix left little to be desired. As for extras, I think most studios were afraid of expansive special editions at the time, so all there was to feast on was a trailer and production notes. Warner has finally done right this time with this two-DVD special edition of THE LOST BOYS.

The movie is presented only in the original aspect ratio of 2.35:1, anamorphically enhanced, but the widescreen print is basically the only real way I'd want to view this film. The movie exhibits great scope and flair, something evident on this brand new digital transfer which kicks the previous DVD right out of the stadium. When I heard that this was coming out, I hocked the previous DVD I owned on a whim. A lot of the grain and dirt has been noticeably cleaned up, although a wee bit are still present at some points (the main titles for example). Print flaws seemed to have virtually disappeared, and that is a real good thing. And the colors have tightened up as well, with the reddish tints in the conclusion looking pristine, the nighttime sequences detailed and clean (basically the whole movie retains this level of proper sharpness), and flesh tones and blackness/shadow levels alike showing balanced saturation. This is the most adequate way to view the movie thus far.

However, the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix sounds held over from the previous release. There are positives to this release, particularly the mixing of dialogue and music cues both with fine fidelity and no overlapping or muting of one over the other. And the effects sound particularly well just as much. Where this track falls apart is in terms of surround and subwoofer utilizations. The surround separation aspect seems for the most part well-attributed, but unconfident, with most of the big action sequences suffering from some rather dull response and force. This is especially a problem given this film's grand finale, when there's so much happening that I kept expecting a lively mix to come through. This is sub par, as is the LFE, which like the rear surround speakers provides moments of disturbance but hardly any kick. It's a shame they didn't give this one a new audio mix as well, because that takes away from the improvement of the picture quality. A French language Dolby 2.0 track exists as well, and subtitles are optional English, French and Spanish.

Fans of the movie will enjoy the new audio commentary Joel Schumacher recorded for this movie, although he could've afforded to have had one or two other persons on board. Throughout this commentary, Schumacher provides a lot of solid information, but there's more patches of momentary silence and stillness than I hoped for. Still, it's fun to realize that this was originally a movie aimed at a demographic much younger than the age of 17, and that Schumacher would not agree to do such a film. There's a lot of flattery and the adjective "great" aimed at the cast and crew, but he provides mostly intelligent comments on the involvement of all concerned. He also talks about the locations, the music, his outlook on the vampire lore, production concerns involving a teenaged cast and a small budget, and also a particularly memorable direction aimed at maggot wrangling. It will take patience to sit through if you aren't a fanatic of the film, but I thought it was quite worth the full listen.

The second disc houses the remainder of all the extras, and there's a lot to sift through. THE LOST BOYS: A Retrospective rounds off to 24 minutes in length, and features comments by Schumacher, executive producer Richard Donner, cinematographer Michael Chapman, and stars Kiefer Sutherland, Corey Haim, Corey Feldman, Jamison Newlander, and Edward Herrmann. Schumacher essentially rehashes most of his previous anecdotes on all of the documentaries presented here, but there's considerably more in this documentary. However, with five other featurettes that concern separate aspects of the movie, this feels more like a fluff piece, as we learn of how the project began, how the cast and crew were assembled, and then we jump all the way to the impact of the film to this day. It feels like they isolated everything in the middle, and this presents a rather sudden jump in tone. And also, a lot of the comments about the impact of the movie seem extreme to say the least. I wouldn't exactly call this timeless or ground-breaking, but I'm sure both TNT Networks would agree with what the principals have to say in the end. Kiefer Sutherland points out this film gets played at art house theaters around midnight, and I can't argue with that, even though I feel some theaters might have lost their prints of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show."

"Inside the Vampire's Cave" is four separate mini-documentaries that play a combined 18:30 when selected to "play all." The shortest of the quartet is the last of the four, The Lost Boys: A Sequel?, where most of the cast and crew comment on the rumors and response on whether or not there would be a part two. Since it was too late to make a Frog Brothers spin-off, which Feldman says was one of the suggestions, the most possible follow-up would be "The Lost Girls," a gender reversal of the original. Comedy vs. Horror and Fresh Blood: A New Look At Vampires are about five minutes apiece, with each of them explaining the initial uncertainty of whether or not the film could survive as both funny and frightening (the studio in particular were assured it wouldn't work) as well as the movie's modern attitude toward approaching the whole vampire legend. They are both fine, but I still feel "Fright Night" laid the foundations for this one to build upon. A Director's Vision, which is the first available short subject, is the longest, and it focuses primarily on Joel Schumacher's contributions to the film through recollections by all the subjects featured on the "Retrospective" piece.

Vamping Out: The Undead Creations of Greg Cannom runs 13:58 and is exclusively focused on the FX artist's work. Through vintage photographs and some brief taped footage, we focus on the creation of the vampire make-up, starting from Cannom's own recollections of his beginnings in film and theatre, and then on how he compromised with Schumacher's intentions in designing the vampires. Edward Herrmann and Kiefer Sutherland are the only actors who seem to have been interviewed from the vampire camp (it's kind of sad to notice that Jason Patric, Jami Gertz and Dianne Wiest weren't featured), and the duo recall their experiences wearing those infamous hard sclero lenses which whiten your eyes by covering the entire front of your eyeball. This is followed up by The Vampire's Photo Gallery, an assortment of 78 vampire-based production and FX stills.

Haimster & Feldog: The Story of the 2 Coreys runs 4:27 and focuses on how Haim and Feldman met and their feelings about the whole teen idol legacy built around the two of them. Somewhere along "Dream A Little Dream 2," they felt that the ride was over. I don't know if everyone in the world knows their nicknames were "Haimster & Feldog" as Haim recalls, but I was only a baby boy when they were making this film, so I can't be too clear on that. However, fans of the Corey boys will like The Return of Sam and the Frog Brothers, an 18-minute montage of scenes in the movie featuring Corey, Corey and Jamison, presented in a multi-angle video commentary form. You can see and hear each of the three participants separately discuss the movie by watching five selected and edited clips from the film, although the most informative and intriguing comments belong to Mr. Newlander, who was eventually a "Where are they now?" figure who has particular memories about having his acne-riddled face concealed and some small bits of trivia and insight on his character and the featured footage.

The Lost Scenes are a presentation of 16 deleted scenes which aren't individually accessible, and instead play continuously for a total 15:06. All the scenes are featured in 2.35:1 non-anamorphic widescreen and Dolby 2.0 stereo. These scenes mostly do a better job of filling in small holes in the story and character development, focusing on Edward Herrmann's Max character in three scenes involving him and Lucy at both their first dinner date and the visit to Max's house. There's also a moment where David and the boys taunt Lucy, only to scatter away when Max pulls up, some more set-up of Michael as he faces the decision to go to college, a couple of throwaway scenes with Grandpa, and some extensions of scenes with Michael and Star, including a stretched-out single-camera take on their sex scene. They are mostly short and inconsequential (especially one involving Sam and Michael visiting a beach), but they are rather interesting nonetheless.

The World of Vampires is an interactive bonus feature which contains a map of old Earth and seven individual locations that can be highlighted. By selecting one of them and pressing enter, you can access a brief clip that fills you in on the ancient vampire subcultures of the specific region. Featured are: "Eastern Europe & Russia" (3:43), which features the legend of Vlad Tepes, also known as "Dracula"; "British Isles" (1:13), who were exposed to vampires as early as the 12th century; "Greece & Mesopotamia" (1:25), which spawned one of the earliest vampires in Lamastu; "Central & South America" (1:46), which included the Asema, vampires who were much like fairies and traveled around in balls of blue light (Schumacher could've used that as a Tinkerbell); "India" (1:12), with the Rakshasas and Churel species of bloodsucker; "Asia" (3:04), and the vampires of Japan and China; and "Australia" (0:53), whose aborigine vampires have an interesting sort of feeding habit.

Finally, there's two other extras left to go. One's a music video for Lou Gramm's "Lost in the Shadows," which is one of the most corniest videos I've ever seen for a song that I mostly enjoyed. I don't know why the INXS/Jimmy Barnes clip for "Good Times" is not on here, let alone a documentary subject that could've focused primarily on the movie's beloved soundtrack. Finally, the theatrical trailer in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen.

Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It's fun watching THE LOST BOYS Special Edition DVD. Four stars! I recommend it viewed with Warner's recent special edition DVD of another classic movie with the line "One of us," Tod Browning's seminal 1932 shocker "Freaks."