The Lost Boys

1987 Mystery & Suspense

In this hit '80s hybrid of the horror movie and the teen flick, a single mom and her two sons become involved with a pack of vampires when they move into an offbeat Northern California town. Lucy (Dianne Wiest) and her sons, Michael (Jason Patric) and Sam (Corey Haim), move to Santa Carla to live with Lucy's lovable but curmudgeonly father (Barnard Hughes). Lucy gets a job from video-store owner Max (Edward Herrmann), then begins dating him, while Sam hangs out with Edward and Alan Frog (Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander), a pair of vampire-obsessed comic-shop clerks. Soon Michael falls in with some actual vampires after becoming enamored of one of their victims: Star (Jami Gertz), a gypsy-like vixen who is trying to hold on to her humanity even though vampire leader David (Kiefer Sutherland) wants to play Peter Pan to her Wendy. When Michael visits the cavernous hangout of David and his cronies and unwittingly drinks from a wine bottle full of vampiric blood, he becomes an unwilling member of the bloodsucker biker gang. Soon, it's up to Sam and the Frog brothers to destroy David and his ilk without killing Michael and Star. Shot on location in the coastal California town of Santa Cruz and directed by Hollywood pro Joel Schumacher, The Lost Boys became a pop-culture phenomenon thanks to its attractive young stars, offbeat soundtrack, and hip, clever marketing campaign. The film's tagline -- "Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It's fun to be a vampire." -- perfectly captured its knowing mixture of attitude and gore. The effects team who transformed Sutherland and company into snarling bloodsuckers would go on to provide equally gruesome effects for Blade, another revisionist vampire flick, more than a decade later. more..

Director: Joel Schumacher

Starring: Corey Haim, Jason Patric, Dianne Wiest, Edward Herrmann, Barnard Hughes

Reviews

  • The Lost Boys is to horror movies what ''Late Night With David Letterman'' is to television; it laughs at the form it embraces, adds a rock-and-roll soundtrack and, if you share its serious-satiric attitude, manages to be very funny.

    - The New York Times

    27 April 2013

  • The Lost Boys remains a supremely watchable example of something the '80s did right.

    - Empire

    27 April 2013

  • The Lost Boys is a horror movie that's funny without making fun of itself and scary without trying to make you sick.

    Mick LaSalle - The San Francisco Chronicle

    27 April 2013

  • The Lost Boys is schlock, but it's juicy schlock.

    Jay Carr - The Boston Globe

    27 April 2013

  • There's some good stuff in the movie, including a cast that's good right down the line and a willingness to have some fun with teenage culture in the Mass Murder Capital. But when everything is all over, there's nothing to leave the theater with - no real horrors, no real dread, no real imagination - just technique at the service of formula.

    Roger Ebert - The Chicago Sun-Times

    27 April 2013

Awards

  • Best Horror Film

    Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films (1988)

  • Best Young Actor in a Horror Motion Picture

    Young Artist Awards (1988)