The Lost Boys (1987) Directed by Joel Schumacher
The famous tagline of this film is: 'Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It's fun to be a vampire.'
The vampire movies of the 1980s seriously
needed some reinvention, in this movie the vampires are transformed into punks.
They were no longer scary monsters or blood devouring old men or too sexy.
Before The Lost Boys and Buffy, vampires were solitary and rarely
travelled in packs. For the first time the vampires are a band of stylized,
leather clad, thrill seeking bikers, this was quite unique at the time and
heavily inspired other films and TV shows later on.
Although the typical vampire cliches
remain in this film, they work well. The vampires are allergic to holy water,
they burn in the sun, the cliche of garlic was funnily destroyed in the film as
the vamps don't mind it.
The film has some interesting parallels
with 'Peter Pan', the title first all refers to Peter Pan and his friends, the
tagline 'never grow old' is similar to 'never grow up'. The character of Lucy
Emerson, the mother of the two boys Michael and Sam is wooed by the 'alpha
vampire' Max and nearly forced to be a 'mother' to the 'lost boys', much
like Wendy.
The style of the vampires are very attractive
for the decade, leather coats, punk, bleached hair, piercing, bikes and the 'no
fear' attitude of punks that audiences loved.
Kiefer Sutherland's character of David
kick started a new age of Gothic sexiness. Without him Joss Whedon wouldn't
have created the iconic character of Spike and without the success of this film
he wouldn't have created the hit show Buffy.
This film is not scary, it is more of a
horror comedy with still a few scares and violent moments. I enjoyed watching
it and will watch it again.
These vampires had a 'killer style'
Biker vampires
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