"I don't believe it! My own brother, a god-damn shit sucking vampire! Boy, just wait until mom finds out buddy!"
The Lost Boys is not just one of my favorite horror movies, it's one of my favorite movies period. With an amazing cast, a witty script and hip direction by Joel Schumacher that will forever have me defending him to irate Batman fans. It was also one of the few 80's horror movies to not have it's reputation sullied by sequels. That's right there are no sequels to The Lost Boys and no one can convince me otherwise.
The film centers on two brothers Sam (played by Corey Haim) and Michael (played by Jason Patric), who have just moved to Santa Carla, a small beach town in California with their mother Lucy (played by Dianne Wiest) after her divorce. They're moving in with their eccentric Grandfather (played by Bernard Hughes) and Sam in particular seems less than thrilled, especially with his Grandfather's taxidermy hobby and the fact that there is no TV in the house (which means no MTV either).
Left with nothing better to do, Sam and Michael wander the Santa Carla boardwalk. There Sam meets Edgar and Alan Frog (played by Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander), two self professed vampire slayers who try to warn Sam of the dangers on Santa Carla. Michael, meanwhile, falls for the beguiling charms of a young woman named Star (played by Jami Gertz). She leads Michael to her friends, a gang of dirt bike riding boys led by David (played by Kiefer Sutherland). He's initiated into the gang only to discover they are all vampires and he is now well on his way to becoming one himself. When Sam finds out, he turns to the Frog brothers for help and learns that if they kill the head vampire, all half vampires like Michael will return to normal.
Meanwhile, Lucy meets Max (played by Edward Herrman), the charming owner of the local video store. He hires her to be the day manager and the two begin dating as well, with mixed results. Things get complicated when Sam and the Frog brothers suspect Max is the head vampire, leading to an amusing scene where they subject poor Max to a series of vampire tests while crashing a dinner he's having with Lucy at home. But Max passes the tests so, with no other options, the boys fill their squirt guns with holy water, sharpen their stakes and prepare for battle against all of the vampires.
The film itself is rather light on actual scares, with only one scene of the vampire gang slaughtering a bunch of punks partying around a bonfire on the beach being genuinely frightening. But what it lacks in scares, it more than makes up for in just being a fun movie. It moves along at a brisk pace, with a rocking soundtrack and plenty of witty dialogue, much of it from the younger brother Sam and delivered perfectly by Corey Haim. There's also a bit of romance between Michael and Star and Sutherland gives David a sense of seductive menace. And all these years later, I still can't quite believe Dianne Wiest and Edward Herrmann are in this movie. Both are clearly having fun in their roles, especially Herrmann who is having fun in a role outside his usual type, playing a hip video store owner.
The Lost Boys is an absolute blast from start to finish. It's an interesting take on the vampire legends, populated by a cast of colorful characters backed by a rocking soundtrack (I'd even rank it higher than Top Gun for best 80's movie soundtrack) a witty script and great direction from Joel Schumacher. Yeah, the plot is a little predictable at times, but never quite in the ways you expect. There is a charm to the film that I cannot deny. I fell in love with it when I first saw it way back when on VHS and it continues to be an absolute favorite.
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