Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Film Review:The Lost Boys

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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