“The Eighties….,” I sigh with wistful nostalgia. The decade that was so maligned for the twenty years that superseded it. The decade of big hair, mad fashion, cheesy pop and monetary excess the likes of which we haven’t seen since. “Greed is Good” said Gordon Gekko in “Wall Street and it seemed, in many ways, that many of us at the time agreed with him.
So many things were being made available to us ordinary folk on levels we’d not experienced prior. Home video was massive, home computers acted like the precursors to game consoles for those of us who were children in this decade. Vinyl and cassette tapes gave way to CD’s and our music never sounded crisper. The label or name you had on every single item of clothing you owned took on major importance and could even affect the way you were treated at school. (Heaven forbid if your trainers weren’t of a certain brand for example.)
And then, there were the films. Loud and bombastic, designed for maximum entertainment. Jaws in 1975 might have invented the summer blockbuster but the decade that time unfairly wanted to forget amped this up to 11 and delivered film after film that we, as adults, couldn’t wait to show our children when they were the right age, to hopefully imbue in them the same magic we felt touched by when we saw them as children ourselves.
One of the many 80’s phenomenon’s was MTV. THE place to watch and listen to the music that you absolutely had to pay attention to if you wanted to appear hip or current.
It made sense that there were going to be films that tried to emulate the feel of these music videos; tap into the zeitgeist and create something so in the “now” that they would have to be exceptionally bad to come close to failing.
In 1987 director Joel Schumacher gave us one of the quintessential 80’s MTV style movies which just happened to be a horror film (and there were a lot less films in this genre over others that had that style). The Lost Boys is one of those horror movies that even a lot of people who are not a fan of the genre enjoy…..my mum, for example.
Again, I was not quite old enough to see this at the cinema so had to wait for it’s video release before I could watch it but once I had……
This was a vampire film unlike any I’d seen to that date. These vampires weren’t living in a castle in Transylvania. They weren’t stalking the virginal beauties that reminded them of their loves from centuries before. There’s no cloaks or bats or strange waist-high mists floating around wolf infested forests. The vampires here looked like teenagers. They smoked, they dressed in modern day apparel, they enjoyed Chinese food. If we were gonna be vampires, these were the vampires we were gonna be, the kind of vampires we might have wanted to be. These vampires were cool.
Santa Carla in California is the setting for the film and we are told very early on that is the “murder capital of the world”.
Lucy Emerson (Dianne Wiest) moves to this seaside town with her two sons Michael (Jason Patric) and Sam (Corey Haim) following her divorce which has left her with little money and she moves in with her father who lives on the outskirts of the town (Barnard Hughes) who may or may not be ever so slightly crazy (He buys the TV guide so he doesn’t have to watch the programmes, uses window cleaner as aftershave & has a penchant for stuffing animals that look like they were alive when he started stuffing them).
Keen to get away from the house that looks like something out of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” Michael & Sam, along with Lucy, head into town after the sun sets. Lucy is looking for work and is lucky enough to find it on her first night at the local video store run by a man called Max (Edward Herrmann) who seems to take a shine to her very quickly.
Michael & Sam go to the boardwalk, the hive of activity in the town, and see part of a gig featuring a half naked bodybuilder singing and playing saxophone in one of the most 80’s moments ever captured on film.
It’s there that Michael spies an attractive girl, seemingly around his age and she notices him right back and, when she walks away, the already captivated Michael follows. Not wishing to lose any cool points, Michael tells Sam to go off and find his own thing while he chases his hormones.
Sam has already seen something that has attracted his attention; a comic book store, and it it there that we meet Edgar & Alan Frog (Corey Feldman & Jamison Newlander) who run the store on behalf of their parents. Of course, it transpires that the comic book store is just a front for bigger extra-curricular activities. According to the Frog Brothers, who dress like Rambo and take themselves ridiculously seriously, Santa Carla has a vampire problem. Sam, obviously, dismisses this as nonsense.
Vampires? Really?
Michael trails the girl who reveals her name as Star (Jami Gertz) and she seems easier to pick up than a cold but, before she can accept a ride on Michaels motorbike, a gang of youths arrive on their own bikes. Their leader is a peroxide drenched Keifer Sutherland called David who challenges Michael to a race along with the rest of his gang, Paul (Brooke McCarter), Dwayne (Billy Wirth) & Bill S Preston….sorry…Marko (Alex Winter).
As the night continues, Michael is taken to the underground hangout (lair) of the gang where he meets the youngest member Laddie
(Chance Michael Corbitt) who Star is maternally protective over.
The gang, David especially, play mind games with Michael over dinner, transforming his rice and noodles into maggots & worms respectively. Of course, when he is given a special bottle of wine and Star tells him not to drink it as it’s blood, Michael dismisses her warning.
We, the audience, are a step ahead of most of the characters here. We know that Michael drank blood and as his attitude changes, to the disappointment of his mum who is starting to date Max, and he starts wearing dark glasses during the day, it becomes clear that something untoward is going on.
Sam discovers his brother is a “shit-sucking vampire” after the family dog Nanook, saves Sam from possibly being Michaels first human shaped snack but the younger of the brothers, who has been reading up on his vampire lore in the comics (survival manuals) given to him by the Frogs along with their, albeit, comically po-faced bravado believe that Michael is only a half-vampire. Full vamp status isn’t achieved until you make your first kill and if they are able to destroy the head vampire, Michael will revert back to normal.
The boys piece together the facts and come to the conclusion that Max, the mild-mannered video store owner is the head vampire. After all, the trouble began after their mum met Max and his dog, Thorn, nearly mauled Lucy when she visited his house which may be an indication that he is a “hound of hell”, a daytime protector for the sleeping bloodsucker.
Sam and the Frog Brothers devise a plan to “out” Max as he comes for dinner. This is one of the comic highlights of the film as they spill water on him, force him to over-indulge on garlic and try to startle him with his own reflection all to no avail. Max is not a vampire…….mmmm.
Lucy believes it’s Sam acting out to the new man in her life and Max, showing restraint (aaahhh…hindsight) tells Sam that he’s not looking to become the replacement father which leaves Sam ashamed and sorry for ruining his mothers evening and potentially scuppering a renewed chance at finding love.