The Lost Boys

For other uses, see Lost Boys.

The Lost Boys
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Joel Schumacher
Written by	Janice Fischer James Jeremias (story and screenplay) Jeffrey Boam (screenplay only)
Produced by	Harvey Bernhard Richard Donner
Starring	Jason Patric Kiefer Sutherland Corey Haim Corey Feldman Jami Gertz Edward Herrmann Barnard Hughes Dianne Wiest
Cinematography	Michael Chapman
Edited by	Robert Brown
Music by	Thomas Newman
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date	July 31 1987
Running time	93 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

The Lost Boys is a 1987 American comedy-horror film about two young Arizonans who move to California and end up fighting a gang of teenage vampires.

The film stars Jason Patric, Corey Haim, and Kiefer Sutherland, and co-stars Jami Gertz, Corey Feldman, Dianne Wiest, Edward Herrmann, Alex Winter, Jamison Newlander, and Barnard Hughes. It was directed by Joel Schumacher.

The title is a reference to the Lost Boys in J. M. Barrie's stories about Peter Pan and Neverland.

Plot

Divorced mother Lucy Emerson and her two teenage sons Michael and Sam move from Phoenix to live with Lucy's crusty father in Santa Carla, a coastal California town plagued with gang activity and unexplained disappearances.

At a boardwalk concert, Michael is fascinated by a beautiful young woman. After following her along the boardwalk, he sees her getting on a motorcycle with David, the leader of the local gang. The following night he finds the young woman again and learns her name is Star. As they are about to leave together on Michael's motorcycle, David reappears and provokes Michael into following him and his cadre. They drive to some sea-cliffs where Michael is almost baited into going over the edge. Michael slugs David, who merely sees potential in Michael and invites him to the gang's lair, an old dilapidated hotel.

At the hotel, the gang leads Michael through an unsettling initiation involving Chinese takeout. At the end, an annoyed Michael takes a swig from a bottle which contains the lead vampire's blood. The gang then takes Michael out to where some railroad tracks cross a foggy gorge; one by one the group jumps off the tracks and out of sight. Michael realizes they are hanging from exposed reinforcement bars. They talk him into joining them under the tracks. As the train roars overhead, the reinforcement bar shakes and one by one the members of the gang fall into the foggy gorge, but they do not die; Michael can hear them goading him to fall. Unable to lift himself up, or hold on any longer, Michael falls in as well.

Michael wakes up in his bed still in the clothes he wore the night before. It's mid-day and he has no clue how he got there. He soon starts showing the symptoms of vampirism: he sleeps all day, he becomes sensitive to sunlight, and his reflection is transparent. Michael returns to the the gang, and they reveal that they are indeed vampires, murdering a group of teenagers at a bonfire party. David explains that Michael must feed in order to survive, but Michael refuses to kill and leaves.

With the help of Star, Sam, and two relatively inept vampire hunters named Edgar and Alan Frog, Michael sets out to break his curse by killing the "head vampire". This proves difficult, as it is not immediately evident who this is. Sam and the Frog Brothers suspect Lucy's new boyfriend Max, but their tests during his visit to their house all indicate he is human.

The teens determine that David must be the head vampire. After unsuccessfully trying to kill him in their lair, they prepare for a retaliatory attack. That night, the vampires invade the Emerson home. With the help of Sam's dog, Nanook, the defenders pick off the gang-members one by one, ending with Michael impaling David on some deer antlers in his grandfather's taxidermy workshop. However, Michael is still a vampire, and Max then reappears and reveals himself to be the head vampire after all; the tests hadn't worked because he had been freely invited into the house. As Max is about to bite Lucy's neck, her father crashes his jeep through the wall of the house; the vehicle's hood is piled up with large fence posts, and one of them impales Max, killing him. As the others stare in amazement, Grandpa casually gets a root beer from the refrigerator and remarks, "One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach... all the damn vampires."

Cast

• Jason Patric as Michael Emerson
• Corey Haim as Sam Emerson
• Dianne Wiest as Lucy Emerson
• Corey Feldman as Edgar Frog
• Jamison Newlander as Alan Frog
• Kiefer Sutherland as David
• Jami Gertz as Star
• Barnard Hughes as Grandpa
• Edward Herrmann as Max
• Brooke McCarter as Paul
• Billy Wirth as Dwayne
• Alex Winter as Marko
• Chance Michael Corbitt as Laddie Thompson
• Tim Capello as Himself / Sax Player

Keenan Wynn and John Carradine (a veteran of vampire films) were both original choices for Grandpa. Wynn died right before filming and Carradine was too ill.

Though almost all of Kelly Jo Minter's scenes are deleted from the film, and the only true appearance she makes is over Lucy's shoulder in the video store, she still received billing in the film's opening credits. Her scenes can be viewed in the 2004 Lost Boys DVD special features. including glen danzig

Production

• The amusement park scenes were filmed at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in California. This is the same park that appeared in Brotherhood of Justice (1986) (TV) (also starring Kiefer Sutherland). The Boardwalk also was seen in the Dirty Harry sequel Sudden Impact (1983) and Harold and Maude (1971).

• The original screenplay written by 'Janice Fischer', and James Jeremias was about a bunch of "Goonie-type 5th-6th grade kid vampires", with the Frog Brothers being "chubby 8-year-old Cub Scouts", and Star being a boy instead of a love interest. Joel Schumacher hated that idea and told the producers he would only sign on if he could change them to teenagers, as he thought it would be sexier and more interesting.

• Executive producer Richard Donner originally intended to direct the movie himself, but as production languished, he moved on to Lethal Weapon (1987) - and eventually hired Joel Schumacher for the job.

• The movie didn't originally end on a joke. After the scene with Grandpa at the refrigerator, it was supposed to cut to the surviving Lost Boys regrouping in the sunken hotel. The last shot was of a mural on the wall, made in the early 1900's, with Max in it - looking exactly the same as he did today. All of this appeared in an early draft of the script, but ultimately was never filmed.

• Kiefer Sutherland was only meant to wear black gloves when riding the motorbike. However, while messing around on the bike behind-the-scenes, he fell off, breaking his wrist so he had to wear the gloves through the whole movie to cover his cast.

Box office and critical importance

The Lost Boys performed well at the U.S. box office, grossing over $32 million - a strong performance for an R-rated horror movie, especially at that time.

It won a Saturn Award for Best Horror Film in 1987. The film was part of an 80s trend to make the vampire figures of the stories of old more applicable to audiences in the 1980s, one that included 1987's western-gothic Near Dark and the suburban Fright Night of 1985.

The Novella

As was the case for many of WB's films at the time, Craig Shaw Gardner was given a copy of the script and asked to write a short novel to accompany the film's release. It was released in paperback by Berkley Publishing and is 220 pages long. It includes several scenes later dropped from the film such as Michael working as a trash man for money to buy his leather jacket. It expands the roles of the opposing gang, the Surf Nazis, who were seen as nameless victims of the vampires in the film. It includes several tidbits of vampire lore, such as not being able to cross running water and salt sticking to their forms. It has become something of a collector's item among fans with prices ranging from $20 for a well-read and somewhat battered copy to well over a $150 for copies in good condition.

The Sequel

'David' (Kiefer Sutherland) is impaled on a pair of antlers but doesn't disintegrate like the other vampires. Despite what Max later says, he is not really supposed to be dead. This was intended to be picked up in a sequel, The Lost Girls, which was scripted but never made.

Scripts for this and other sequels have been circulating since the late 1980s, and the original film's director, Joel Schumacher, made several attempts at one during the 1990s.

Finally, over 20 years after the release of the original film, Lost Boys: The Tribe, was greenlighted. It is currently in production and is intended to be released sometime in July 2008. Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander will reprise their roles as the Frog Brothers. After some reshoots, Corey Haim will reprise the role of Sam Emerson.

The sequel started shooting in Vancouver in June, 2007. Earlier that year Warner Bros. revealed it would produce a number of straight-to-video sequels for its existing library of franchise-friendly films, including the Lost Boys sequel.

Music

Further information: [[:The Lost Boys (soundtrack)]]

Thomas Newman wrote the film score to be an eerie blend of orchestra and organ arrangement while the music soundtrack contains a number of notable songs and several covers, including "Good Times", a duet between INXS and former Cold Chisel lead singer Jimmy Barnes which reached number 1 on the Australian charts in early 1987. This cover version of a 1960s Australian hit by the Easybeats was originally recorded to promote the Australian Made tour of Australia in early 1987, headlined by INXS and Barnes.

Tim Capello's cover of The Call's "I Still Believe" was featured in the film as well as on the soundtrack. Tim Capello makes a small cameo appearance in the movie playing the song at the Santa Carla boardwalk, with his saxophone and trademark bodybuilder muscles on display.

The soundtrack also features a cover version of The Doors' song "People are Strange" by Echo & the Bunnymen. The song as it featured in the movie is an alternate, shortened version with a slightly different music arrangement. This version has not been released as of yet.

The theme song, "Cry Little Sister", was originally recorded by Gerard McMahon (under his pseudonym of Gerard McMann) for the soundtrack, and later re-released on his self-titled album "G Tom Mac" in 2000.

References in popular culture

The phrase "vamp-out" has gone on to be used elsewhere, including as slang on the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Other Buffy connections include Kiefer Sutherland's father, Donald Sutherland, who played the role of Buffy's first Watcher, Merrick, in the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer feature film.

The Lost Boys has made its way into several video games. Notably in the Troika Games PC game, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. In it, a Malkavian's choice to solve a side quest is to use the Dementation discipline to make a food critic believe he is eating maggots. In another quest, a "thinblood" vampire believes that if his sire is killed, he will be "cured" of vampirism. The player character has the option of responding with the line, "You watch too many movies."

In a number of sitcoms, Haim and Feldman reference The Lost Boys. In National Lampoon's Last Resort when Haim tries crossing himself to ward off an attacker. Feldman interrupts, "Hey, cut that out. You already did that in The Lost Boys." And the show Big Wolf on Campus had Haim and Feldman appear in different episodes as themselves, but vampires, the story being that during the making of The Lost Boys, they actually became vampires.

In the movie Reservoir Dogs Mr. Orange talks about how he was frustrated in his efforts to watch the movie.

The song "Santa Carla Twilight" by psychobilly band Tiger Army is named after the town in The Lost Boys and makes references to vampirism.

The movie inspired the eponymous song by Finnish Gothic rock band The 69 Eyes. The movie adaptating video for their Goth'n'Roll hit was directed by Bam Margera.

External links

• The Lost Boys at IMDb