Viking Night: The Lost Boys
By Bruce Hall
May 21, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Joel Schumacher justifiably gets a bad rap for those hideous bat-nipples, but he’s also made some really interesting, even daring films (Falling Down, Phone Booth) where he managed not to murder any part of my childhood in any way at all. And then there's that handful of overrated box office hits that were a big part of the cultural zeitgeist at the time, but don't feel all that meaningful now. And for my money, The Lost Boys is one of them.
Ten minutes in, here's what we know: The fictional town of Santa Carla, California is known as the “murder capital of the world,” at least for overweight amusement park night watchmen. Something strange and hungry stalks the night, and fleshy, self-important rent-a-cops are on the menu. Demographically, 99 percent of the population is middle-class white people between 18-35 who spend 99 percent of their time partying like it’s 1987. The only available jobs appear to be in the comic book and home video rental industries.
Well, there's also that newly vacant night watchman gig down at the boardwalk.
New to this city of suspended animation are habitual do-gooder and recent divorcee Lucy Emerson (Dianne West) and her two sons, Michael (Jason Patric) and Sam (Corey Haim). Lucy has conveniently cut all ties with the boys' father, who is never mentioned again after a brief, expository conversation on the way into town. Free of the need to develop any further, the trio shacks up with Lucy's cantankerous father (Barnard Hughes), who is basically Eccentric Old Man #6 out of that seemingly bottomless steamer trunk of stock Hollywood characters.
Desperately in need of work, Lucy - as one does - begins her search in the middle of the night down at the boardwalk, during some kind of bacchanalian rock festival.
There, she meets a kindred spirit in local video store owner named Max (Edward Herrmann). Within minutes of meeting, their bleeding hearts are already planning Live Aid II. Meanwhile, Sam drifts into a comic book store where he meets the Frog brothers (Corey Feldman, Jamison Newlander), who seem suspiciously eager to talk about vampires. At the same time, Michael falls madly in love with the least assuming girl at the park, a winsome young thing named Star (Jami Gertz), who’s unfortunately already attached to someone.
That someone would be David (Kiefer Sutherland), the leader of Southern California’s least intimidating biker gang. They scoot up and down the boardwalk on their crappy bikes, smoking cigarettes, staring at people, and then becoming vaguely offended when these people do not appreciate being stared at. It’s obvious that David and his gang have something to do with that “murder capital” thing, but at this point the story does its best to hide the why and wherefore of this. When Team David aren’t busy smirking at people along the boardwalk, they spend their time hanging around an abandoned turn of the century beach resort, eating prop Chinese food, brushing their mullets and staring at pictures of Jim Morrison.
When Michael’s interest in Star brings brings him into David’s orbit, rather than fighting over her (which really is the only reason she’s there) the gang initiates Michael into their ranks - probably because he kind of looks like Jim Morrison. This leads to some rather strange side effects for Michael, and makes Sam’s new acquaintance with the Frog brothers seem like the best coincidence ever. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything when I say that David and his boys are (gasp!) vampires, but there’s more to them - and to Star - than meets the eye. As Michael and Sam struggle grapple with how to get out of this mess, it starts to look like David may not be the most dangerous person in Santa Carla after all.
The only problem with all this is that for a vampire movie, there’s really little to no actual vampire activity until well past the midpoint of the film. And even then, it seems less the focus of the story than it just feels like an incidental byproduct couple of idiots fighting over a girl. In fact, Michael and Star’s obvious mutual attraction feels more perfunctory than anything else. The Lost Boys doesn’t have a “plot” so much as it has an improbable string of contrivances designed to put specific people in specific places at specific times. This isn’t the worst thing in the world, and it’s mitigated somewhat by Schumacher’s glossy, theatrical brand of storytelling. But what you hear me saying is that The Lost Boys has a lot of style, but those old vampire bones are largely lacking meat.
There are some funny moments, but this isn’t really a comedy. The story has a self-serious tone about it; the forced love triangle between David, Michael and Star is too absurd to be affecting in any way. I might even argue that this is less a vampire movie than it is a story about a mother and her two boys trying to find their identity as a family after a traumatic divorce, but the story doesn’t really commit to that either. The only thing The Lost Boys ever really sets its mind to is bringing the vampire mythos into the music video age. It’s sexy, polished, and filled with brooding, attractive, young people. It’s got a pretty cool soundtrack. It is literally infused with Schumacher’s visually ambitious flair.
The Lost Boys is a feast (har) for the eyes, and I suspect that’s the majority of its appeal is in that. The Doors and Jim Morrison were enjoying a resurgence in popularity around the time The Lost Boys came out, and their music - and Morrison’s image - are prominently featured and Patric’s passing resemblance to the music icon is not coincidental. Sutherland is absolutely perfect - he’s a charismatic, unassuming jerk who makes you want to separate his shoulder, and then maybe buy him a beer. Sutherland plays him so effortlessly, you wonder if he’s really acting at all. Despite the fact that nothing about the story makes any damn sense, everything you see on screen at least looks just right.
So, if you put a gun to my head and made me answer yes or no - do I like this movie - I’d have to say yes. It’s vapid, confusing and quite frankly, not very well written. But it captures something about the age in which it was made, and it does this in the way only a truly enduring film can. And while the vibe is largely superficial, I suspect that was kind of the point. Just like MTV, just like spiky hair and mullets, and just like noisy synth-rock - it’s not about what it is, it’s about the way it makes you feel. Maybe you can’t take it seriously, but you can’t completely hate it either. Like a stick of gum, it does its job, loses its flavor, and then it goes away - exactly the way it should.