The Lost Boys

(1987) ****

Sam Emerson: She's one of them! And don't tell me it doesn't make her a bad person, Mike.

Michael and his mother and brother move to coastal Santa Carla to live with their grandpa after mom and dad split up. Mom's busy with her new job and school hasn't started yet, so the boys do a lot of wandering around. Mike sees a pretty girl named Star one night and gets curious. He's not aware of it, but she's supposed to kill him. She's a vampire -- a half-blood, and drinking Michael's blood is going to push her all the way there. But David, the teen vampire who initiated Star, admires Michael's pluck and decides instead to bring him into the fold.

David and his quintet of followers bring Michael back to their hideout. They pass around Chinese food, and tease Michael with mind-tricks to make it look like his noodles are worms and his rice is maggots. Star snaps, "Leave him alone!" and a momentary look of shame passes over David's face. The teasing stops there.


It would seem that David's still got some lingering humanity in him. He blusters and cackles and he kills without mercy, but he also sheds one tear when one of his buds gets staked through the heart. He's full blooded and he still posesses a human longing for companionship, perhaps even more than he had when he was still just a punk teen. Like Peter Pan and his gang (after which the film was named), he wants never to grow up and he wants to pull other kids out of their lives so they can fly with him (and eat some of the others --- David, not Peter Pan). Even more curious is the 10 year old vampire boy scampering around after them -- they wanted a little brother? Apparently they didn't stop to think how pissed that kid would be the day he realizes he's never going to get pubes.

Of course this isn't the main focus of the flick. It's mostly about Michael and how he and his brother Sam confront Michael's predicament. He's a good person, Michael, wholly uninterested in giving up his life. This is largely because he really had no idea what he was getting into when he took his first sip from the bottle of red stuff David handed to him. It's also because he comes from a nice family. His mom, Lucy, is maybe a little lax with the kids, but it doesn't seem to matter: both boys are very good natured and very good to mom. They've inherited their goodwill from her -- early on in the film, she can be seen sending Sam over to a pair of kids rooting through a dumpster to hand them money for a proper meal.


Michael momentarily loses control of himself when his vampirism first sets in -- it takes a bite on the hand from Sam's dog, Nanook, to keep Michael from attacking his own brother. But once he's aware of himself, his primary concerns are protecting his family and his new love (Jami Gertz can't act very well, but she sure is great at screaming "Michael!"), and getting his humanity back.

The Lost Boys is an 80's classic which means we all look back on it with a mixture of nostalgia and embarassment at what we considered cool at the time. It's not just Kiefer Sutherland's gnarly-ass mullet. It's Corey Haim's ridiculous flourescent wardrobe. It's Jason Patric's stupid earring. It's everyone living in Santa Carla -- mullets and floppy bangs and mousse; hot pink and silk shirts -- the whole town is like a UN of dated style.


That's pretty much all that's wrong with the movie. I was going to add to that list Corey Feldman's hammy performance but then I consider that he and his brother work in a comic book store and their parents who "run" the place spend literally all of their screen time sagging listlessly behind the counter in a catatonic drug haze, so of course the kids would be maladjusted.

Overall, a fun flick, as good as you remember and with more going on in the characterizations than I grasped when I saw it as a kid.