30 years ago (!) this summer, audiences, including me, loved the very odd blender of genres featured in THE LOST BOYS.
Part comedy, part coming-of-age teen flick, part vampire movie with a dash of family drama, this is one very odd, yet oddly entertaining movie.
Dianne Weist (Edward Scissorhands, The Bird Cage) is Lucy, a single mom with two sons arriving in a new seaside California town to change her life.
Michael is played by Jason Patric, all 80's hair and attitude and his younger brother Sam is played by 80's kid star Corey Haim, who is cursed here with the single worst wardrobe in history. It's as if the costume designer had a personal grudge against Haim. Picture a Carol Burnett skit with touches of RuPaul and you'll be close.
Michael falls in with a local gang of young punk bikers, led by David, played with style by Kiefer Sutherland, who steals the movie anytime he's on screen. Jamie Gertz (Twister, Sixteen Candles) is Star, who warns Michael not to get too close.
When the gang turns out to be a marauding band of vampires and the town's missing persons rate equals Stephen King's fictional town of Derry, Lucy begins to doubt her choice to move.
Once Sam meets young video store workers Edgar and Allan Frog, who double as vampire hunters, the film takes one of many twists into odd comedy. Edgar Frog is played by Corey Feldman and that speaks for itself.
I met Corey one time in Cabo, many years ago he was staying in the same resort that Tamara and I were. It was about 90 degrees and he came out of his room wearing a full leather Michael Jackson replica black outfit. He was friendly and funny, but just a little off and that's well on display here.
Director Joel Schumacher has made some good films (Phantom of the Opera, Batman Forever) but he's also made some of the worst movies I've ever seen, including the trainwreck Clooney caped crusader movie "Batman and Robin".
A blend of bad 80's trends and his own eccentricities are very distracting watching this 30 years later, but some of the music choices are terrific, including Lou Gramm's 'Lost in the Shadows", an update of The Doors "People Are Strange" by Echo and the Bunnymen, "Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me" by Roger Daltrey and several tunes from INXS.
The violent, bloody conclusion is undeniably entertaining and the film does have some good laughs, especially during Michael's first experience at home as a vampire.
Its tone is so scattered it's like watching a few different movies edited together by kindergartners, but damned if it isn't still pretty fast and fun to watch 30 years later.
How about that hair!
There's plenty of nostalgic fun to be found in THE LOST BOYS. I'll crank up the soundtrack and give it a B-.
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