Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997)
Lost Boys, The

Tagged: Film.

US movie (1987). Warner. Produced by Harvey Bernhard. Executive producer: Richard Donner. Directed by Joel Schumacher. Special effects: Greg Cannom, Matt Sweeney. Screenplay by Jeffrey Boam, Janice Fischer, James Jeremias. Novelization: The Lost Boys * (1987) by Craig Shaw Gardner. Starring: Corey Feldman (Edgar), Jami Gertz (Star), Edward Herrmann (Max), Barnard Hughes (Grandpa), Brooke McCarter (Paul), Jamison Newlander (Allan), Jason Patric (Michael), Kiefer Sutherland (David), Dianne Wiest (Lucy), Alex Winter (Marco), Billy Wirth (Dwayne). 98 mins. Colour.

Divorcee Lucy comes with elder son Michael and younger son Sam to live with her father (Grandpa) in waterside fun city Santa Carla, the "Murder Capital of the World". The high murder rate is in fact because this Bad Place is plagued by a gang of four stylish, punk-dressing motorcycling Vampires (Dwayne, Marco, Paul and leader David). The two lads and Grandpa, plus the Frog brothers Edgar and Allan (who proclaim themselves professional vampire-killers and are like Ghostbusters in miniature) and the girl Michael falls for, Star, eventually succeed in destroying the vampires and their seemingly respectable master, Max.

Reportedly born from an aborted project to create a vampiric version of J M Barrie's Peter Pan (performed 1904; rev 1928), the Spielbergish The Lost Boys is a triumph of style over content; it is largely responsible for the modern subgenre featuring streetwise Vampires. The hip Lost Boys are ancestors of Sonja Blue, in Nancy A Collins's Sunglasses After Dark (1989), and descendants of Lestat in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. Yet The Lost Boys has a reactionary, paranoid subtext: punkish youths are a frighteningly different species, sucking blood from established society. [JG]