[Film Review] The Lost Boys (1987)

David and his younger brother Sam move with their mother Lucy to the seaside town of Santa Carla. Still recovering in the aftermath of divorce, Lucy settles in with her eccentric father and looks for work in the sinister, yet bustling, town known, according to local graffiti, as the murder capital of the world. David and Sam are left to explore the boardwalk and become acquainted with Santa Carla’s residents. For Sam, this leads to a meeting with the Frog brothers, Edgar and Alan, kindred spirits who share his love for comic books. For Michael, an evening on the boardwalk ends with an ill-fated meeting with Star. In pursuing her, he meets David and his gang, who take a shine to him. Before long, Michael is in David’s thrall and it becomes clear to Sam that he needs to be rescued from David’s clutches. Will Michael say hello to the night, or will he turn back before it’s too late?

In all honesty, I am not an impartial viewer of The Lost Boys. It is, to my mind, a perfect vampire movie, and I would know as a rampant devotee of the genre. It’s got it all, a killer soundtrack (I’m looking at you, greased up Tim Capello), incredible clothes and, most importantly, hot vampires. Firstly, let’s turn to the clothes. This is a film very much of its time and place, think spiky bleached blonde mullets, leather jackets and dangly earrings. And that’s just the men. This creates a sumptuously 80’s vision that only adds to the delightfully camp tone to the film. This is not a vampire movie that will keep you up at night but, much like Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this is a film that plays with the luscious notion of what it would mean to be a vampire, the sexy, sensual fun of draining the life out of tourists and dangling upside down from railway lines. These are bad boys in the extreme, and Michael sees a chance to be a bad boy too, in that typical teenage rebellion so often evoked in 80’s movies. What sets The Lost Boys apart from other vampire movies is that the theme of the sexy vampire, the sensuality of the act of fluid transmission and the insatiable hunger are applied to a dynamic between two men, rather than the usual stereotype of a woman under the spell of an enigmatic man who wants to suck her blood. This adds a depth to the story that encourages the viewer to think about the inherent intimacy of the vampire. 

The town of Santa Carla is so vividly integral to the film that I would argue it could be classed as a folk horror, using my own personal  criterion of a temporal and geographical specificity. As the heat of the day evaporates, the boardwalk comes alive in the rays of the setting sun, much like the titular lost boys, and provides a perfect playground for their blood thirsty antics. In the opening scenes we see David and his boys stalking the carousel as sinister calliope music rings out in the background, reminding us of the dangerous underbelly of seaside towns, where children disappear from fun houses, and you might find a razor blade in your candy apple. The transient nature of the town enables David and the rest of his vampire biker gang (but of course they are a biker gang) to feed with impunity. The heat crazed town itself becomes as much a character as Michael and David and acts as a seedy backdrop to their macho power struggle. We are also given numerous shots of the people who haunt the boardwalk, families with crying children, punks and social outcasts, and we see Michael’s alienation reflected in the hostile faces of these strangers, as he exists as a stranger in his own life. A lost boy himself in a new town, searching for meaning. This sense of alienation pervades the film and we see how the vampire trope acts as a metaphor for the angst of our teenage years. Michael faces a dramatic transition into something he doesn’t understand, and it is easy to see how this occurs in tandem with his transition into manhood. He doesn’t know how to become a man, and has no male role model. Thus David becomes his ideal, and he is willing to follow blindly in order to be accepted.

Toxic masculinity is at the centre of The Lost Boys, and it is interesting to see the vampire motif utilised to explore this. The lost boys are just that, lost, and they want someone new to play with. They are frustrated in the stasis of adolescence, thrill seeking without the thrill and reminding us that where there is no risk, there is no reward; where there is only endless hunger there can be no satisfaction. Michael represents all that David can never be, and so he covets him. In Lucy’s character, we see a single mother trying to do her best for her sons and herself in a new town. She is concerned but doesn’t know how to reach Michael, and cannot see that his nocturnal activities and sullen demeanour are linked to more than just teenage hormones. This dynamic reinforces the notion of the painful transition into adulthood, as Lucy seeks to pull Michael back to her, and he strives to push away, seeking independence and to achieve what he perceives successful masculinity to be.

Alongside the fun, the motorbike races down the beach and the delightfully over the top effects in the third act, there are moments of genuine tenderness, love and introspection as well as a reflection on the notion of what it means to be an outcast and to become a man. The Lost Boys is a complex, multi-faceted narrative that masquerades as a campy 80’s comedy horror, but whichever way you choose to interpret it, you’ll always be entertained. 

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