Our story takes place in the quaint little town of Santa Carla, nestled snugly on the California coastline. Its boardwalk and amusement park atmosphere remind me of the left coast cop out of Coney Island or Atlantic City. Not exactly the kind of place you'd expect to bare the nickname "Murder Capital of the World" if you ask me... not that you did ask me, but then you don't care about my thoughts or opinions, do you? You selfish whores... Yeah, so, as I was saying, Santa Carla looks pretty, but it's got a dark secret, a cancer just beneath the skin that's about to become trouble for the Emerson family (no relation to Lake or Palmer... I'm guessing), who have moved to Carla from their stressful surroundings in Phoenix Arizona to start a new life on the beach. Yes, Lucy Emerson (Dianne "She' Been In A Lot Of Movies No Self-Respecting Death God Would Ever Watch" Wiest) has brought along her sons Sam (Corey "Corey #1" Haim) and Michael (Jason "For Some Reason My Girlfriend Gets Wet Over This Schmuck" Patric) to burden her taxidermist father (Barnard Hughes, who was in Tron!) who’s simply referred to as "Dad" and "Grandpa", in lovely Santa Carla... remember, it’s the murder capital of the world…

Their first night in their new digs, the family heads to the boardwalk carnival area to learn more about the local flavors of Santa Carla, though I'm sure they can't beat Arizona's rampant sex cauldrons and brothels! Sure enough, everybody finds romance on said magical stretch of pseudo sidewalk as Mike gets the stupid eye for a gypsy neo-hippie broad named Star, Lucy catches gainful employment from and the groinal interest of a local video store owner named Max, and Sam cavorts with a socially stumped sibling duo known as the Frog brothers, Edgar and Allen (what, no little sister named Poe? heee-yuck), who own their own comic book shop and fancy themselves amateur vampire hunters... ah, summer romance, makes me feel fine… or is that “summer breeze”?... or Summer’s Eve?...

Hey, if all of our characters get their own special little fulfillments from the amusement park then what do we, the viewing audience, get out of the experience? Isn’t there anything to satisfy our needs as human beings trolling along the boardwalk too? Well, I'll tell you what we get: a gyrating saxophonist. Picture Michael Bolton's head on a body builder's oily pecs with bits of chain draping his carcass and tight purple spandex pants clinging for dear life to his “I swear I’m not gay!” gym perfected legs and buttocks while he thrusts his hips the entire time as if struggling through a seizure, wrapping his lips around a metal instrument that resembles a twisted phallus I once saw in a bizarre adult film about deformed genitalia and people who fart during anal sex... THAT, my friends and fiends, is what we, the audience, are treated to. If you want to see what I mean, click that lovely rolling head graphic at the bottom of this page and taste the rainbow for yourself. Yes, even in the '80s days of his career, Schumacher's rampant homoerotic imagery is glaringly apparent and no less disturbing than his '90s "work" with a certain caped crusader who shall go unnamed... though he's mentioned in numerous other segments of this very review.

On to less trauma inducing imagery, Sam flexes his fanboy knowledge for the Frogs (fear not, I speak not of the titular menace of Frogs, so there’s no need to turn away and end this review prematurely like so many sad bedroom experiences), rearranging their Superman "literature" and gaining their nerd heavy respect. I'd probably bitch slap the kid though, as his expertise lies in DC Comics. This is no shock though, considering the movie's a licensed property of Warner Bros., subsidiary of Time Warner, owned by Ted "The Evil Jedd Clampett" Turner who, amidst his other ownerships of 62% of the world, also holds DC Comics in his pants. Bah, if I keep ranting like this Schumacher will have put out 3 more nightmares by the end of the review, putting him within 4 of the dreaded "Schumacher Prophecy"! For those of you unaware of this, it’s an apocalyptic vision foreshadowed in every religious text in recorded history. Trust me, it's in there, you just gotta look hard enough... and take perspective altering narcotic "vitamin supplements" when doing so.

Now that the Frogs Brothers (Corey “Corey #2” Feldman and some other guy nobody cares about) feel they can trust their impressionable new Arizonian pal, they let him in on the secret of just why their sleepy costal burg is the murder capital of the world: vampires. Yes, bloodsuckers are real and they're running rampant through Santa Carla's after hours scene... but then we've already deduced this from several related scenes that I've not mentioned so far, just because this part was meant to be a surprise... though if you've read the box cover to this movie (and provided you're not one of the last 15 or so people who haven’t seen or heard about the movie already) then you'd probably have figured this shit out on your own, though if you frequent this site then I'm probably giving you far too much credit... I kid! I kid because I love. Now, get back to my brainwashing, err, "criticism of other peoples' cinematic hard work".

Speaking of vampires, Mike's new girly girl happens to be involved with these leather jacket-clad, motorcycle riding Nosferatu punks of the Santa Carla boardwalk. Can even Jason Patric compete with the children of the night? Well, maybe he doesn't have to as Michael, in his attempts to woo Star with his second hand motorbike and unchecked testosterone levels, winds up trading machismo with the vampires, more specifically their leader David (Keifer "I Was Cool Once" Sutherland), who extends a talon to Michael to join them. Not the sharpest machete in the tool shed, Mikey doesn't pick up that these guys really are vampires though... until it's too late! *dramatic resound*... in other words, later on in the movie after he’s screwed up and accidentally joined their darkness skulking ranks. Oh, and if one of those hemoglobin drinkers looks like he'd be more comfortable in a phone booth with Keanu Reeves than drinking blood, it's not because he's a boy whore from the San Francisco street corners, rather because he's Alex "Bill S. Preston Esquire!" Winter... though right about now, you might just find him doing the boy whore thing, only not somewhere as glamorous as San Fran… more like a 7 Eleven in the dark underbelly of an Oregon suburbia, praying for that phone call to be in Bill & Ted 3: Desperate to Beat a Dead Horse in a Time When '80s Retro is in Style... featuring cameo appearances by Alf, Mr. T, Airwolf and the Snorks...

Back to our flick, David and Mike hop their rice burners and drag race across the California shoreline all to the tune of some really ripe '80s "metal" music. As with any drag race with Keifer Sutherland (I can testify to this), it ends with Mike eating maggots from a Chinese take-out box and drinking blood in the subterranean hotel lair of the undead cadre under the ever watchful eyes of a big Jim Morrison painting... kinda reminds you of "The Great Gatsby"... you'll have to forgive me for trying to link an '80s vampire “Coreys flick” with F. Scott Fitzgerald's literary classic. The next morning Michael comes home late, wearing sunglasses, a brand new piercing and still a little hung over. You have no idea how heavy somebody else's plasma will flat out rape your brain. If you don’t believe me, just ask Alan Thicke! That guy can down a kegger of B Negative like it was mineral water!

Meanwhile, younger brother Sam is trying to confuse the audience by sending us mixed signals of his sexuality, as we witness a Reform School Girls poster on his bedroom wall, only to discover it adjacent to a poster on his closet of a male model pulling up his muscle shirt to show us his gleaming six pack and flashing a look on his face that just begs any confused young man on the verge of adulthood to whip it out and start beating like mad until the hydraulics kick back in... not that I'd know what that's like mind you. I hope the fact that this glaringly homoerotic image appears on a closet and in a Joel Schumacher movie isn't entirely lost on you, because I've had my fill of explaining same sex relationships to people this week. You have no idea how short the attention span of an entire room of kindergartners is until you try telling them why dad lives with "Uncle Butch" and mom lives with "Aunt Mona".

Back to Mike, he's already on his way down the path to darkness and vampirism after just a couple shots off the tainted bottle of hooch that contained Dave's blood. Vampires today have it so easy. I remember in my days as the Terror of the Nile when you had to be embalmed alive, buried in flesh eating scarabs and poisonous scorpions and half-eaten by a flying bat jackal demon before you could become Nosferatu, none of this "here, drink some cursed vein juice" bullshit. Damn lazy kids. Anyway, being on the path to the dark side, Mike begins to show his symptoms, including paling flesh, a tendency to shy from sunlight and horrible gut wrenching hunger pains. However, it's his fading reflection and tendency to levitate from the floor at random that concern brother Sam. He puts 1 and 1 together and gets pi, devising that not only are the Frog brothers right about vampires in the murder capital of the world, but Mike will soon be one of them... unless they can kill the head vampire before that happens. Yes, instead of staking his elder sibling, blood proves thicker than water (and I really wish my brain could fire the synapses required to make a vampire joke about that line, but it's just not happening right now!) and Sam enlists the aid of Edgar and Allen in his quest to cleanse Mike and save his soul. Concerned viewers are no doubt wondering where the mother is while all this teen angst is flying around, so I'll tell you. Simply put, Max is trying to dip his pen in the company ink, as he and Lucy work on something more than a business relationship. I suspect they spend a lot of time sorting out the new release videos in that little room in the back, behind the cheesy swinging saloon doors with the big piece of construction paper on them that says "No One Under 21" *wink*wink*.

Speaking of people dipping things, Mike goes back to the Boys' lair to talk to Star about his condition and how she never did anything to save him. He of course winds up sinking something other than his elongated canines into his new girlfriend, though the big plus of this scene is the departure from this exchange of bodily fluids, as the camera exits and relocates out over the ocean, flying over the clouds and coastline, giving us a bloodsucker's eye view as the villains return home from a late night of eating tourists and beach bums. As for Sam and the Frogs, they're now set with the task of wiping out the head vampire, which requires them to first figure out who said carnivore is. Heavy with paranoia and desperate for an easy answer, the trio target Lucy's beau/boss Max. Since they can't just start pounding stakes into the oversized geek without proof, they decide to pull a few covert tests on him when he comes to the house for dinner. However, feeding him shredded garlic and holy water and forcing a mirror in front of his face both prove nothing, as he doesn't foam and bleed from the mouth, nor does he cease to cast a reflection. Guess it's not Max, right? If so, then why the fuck does Grandpa seem to eye him so cautiously? Hmmmm, maybe he's still got that "no man's good enough for my daughter" attitude all fathers have, or perhaps he's just one of those old guys who discover their love for other guys a little late in life... then again, he could be wondering in that wrinkled lump of gray matter just how much he could sell a stuffed Max for on the taxidermy market... and by “taxidermy market” I mean at the next swap meet.

Later, Dave (who seems the obvious choice for leader of the pack) and the rest of the Good Time Gang drag Mikey along on a hunt in an effort to get him to kill, feed and give in to his cravings, becoming a full fledged, card carrying member of the Santa Carla Blood Bank Withdrawal Club. Swooping down on a clan of drunken surf nazis (who, as all Troma fans know "MUST DIE!"), the baddies tear them to shreds and engorge themselves with the alcohol tainted crimson that flows like wine... or water from rusty pipes... I didn't know surf nazis were fans of the Run DMC Aerosmith remix of "Walk This Way", but I guess that's nothing very relevant to the story. Either way, Mike refuses to partake in the feast, marking him as an outcast and just another piece of meat for our nefarious bloodsuckers. His “conflicted morality” gimmick scores him BIG Kool-Aid points with Star though; who it turns out is also a Vegen vamp. Not only does this make them obvious bad choices for vampires, but it also means that neither of them is contractually obligated to become nocturnal partiers, so they can still return to normal human form again… provided that whole “kill the head vampire” thing works out for him. Going with the quick fix, Mike, Sam, Edgar and Allen decide Dave's gotta be the head bad guy and the four pack up their vampire hunting gear and head to the underground Motel Hell to take out their enemies at their most vulnerable... and boy are they heavy sleepers to snooze through all the noise these little turds make. Then comes little or no surprise as our heroes, when confronted with the real thing, lift their skirts over their heads to show off their pussitude, running away and screaming in mass panic after killing Alex Winter doesn't go quite as planned, awakening the other batmen when he starts shooting geysers of blood and monster goo, leaving the boys to narrowly escape the wrath of Dave. Well, as they say while escaping, they weren't prepared for the vamps to have, "pulled a mind scramble on us! They opened their eyes and talked!". Remember kids, nothing is easy and everything always involves more effort than it sounds. Whether it's killing vampires, putting those gay little sweaters on your pet wolverine or having sex, everything's in life is hard and overly complicated.

After regaining their composure and celebrating their small victory (big deal, I can kill Alex Winter in my sleep), our heroes map out their game plan and prepare for the inevitable retaliation from Dave and crew after sunset. Fortifying Grandpa's abode with garlic, holy water, various sharp splinters of timber and so forth (though not a crucifix in the entire house...) whilst mom and grandpa are out getting laid... no, not with each other you weird cretins! If you're looking for that kind of shit I suggest you check out my hidden surveillance videos of Woody Allen's bedroom... Of course we can't have the movie end without the mandatory and always action packed climactic battle of good and evil. By the end though it's Humans 3 and Vampires a big fat ball of goose shit, as the bloodsuckers are defeated in the following deaths: one is disintegrated in a bathtub full of holy water and garlic cloves like a stubborn grass stained soccer uniform in a bowl of Oxy-Clean (which is murder on the house's plumbing in a scene that carries so much projectile slime that I thought I was watching a deleted scene out of From Beyond); another is electrocuted in an incident that involves an arrow through his throat and Grandpa's really big stereo system and ends with the ghoul's head exploding ("Death by stereo!"); and David is disposed of when his final deciding battle with Mike, levitating in the living room and tossing each other around, ends with Dave impaled on the antlers of one of Grandpa's little Texas Chainsaw Massacre arts & crafts projects. So, it's all over, right? Well, since Mike and Star are still baring fangs and hungering for crimson, I'd say the original assumption was correct and David was not in fact the king bloodsucker...

At this time, who should walk through the door but Lucy and Max, who have run home to find it in pieces with dead bodies littering the place and slime painted all over the walls... just another Saturday night when the Coreys get together. Sure enough, Max shows his true dental work, mourning the loss of David, but revealing to everyone his intentions to turn Lucy, Sam and Mike over to his side, making them one big, happy American sitcom family of flesh eating freaks. Why didn't the Frogs' vampire detection methods work in the previous dinner table scene? There's a little loophole with stuff like that. See, when Max came over, Mike invited him into the house, canceling all of his undead weaknesses to reflective surfaces, Italian herbs and church toilet water, making him impossible to detect by normal methods. This time Max wasn't invited in though, meaning that the gloves are off and it's time for an ass kicking!.. or it would be, except that Max holds Sam hostage and threatens to rip his poofy haired little head off if Lucy doesn't give herself to him willingly. Having not gotten any for quite some time, it's no shock to see Lucy baring her neck to give Max a midnight snack. The whole scene is interrupted though, when the whimpering fade of the broken "La Cucaracha" horn on Grandpa's jeep shatters the night air, heralding his crash through the front of the house and sending a large wooden post through Max's chest cavity, combusting him on impact! With Max dead, Mike and Star become human once more and the day is saved. Yep, I told ya Grandpa was acting strange at dinner, meaning he knew about it all the time, reassuring this assumption with the movie's final line, "The one thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach: all the damn vampires."... what a great way to end a picture, heh heh.

I've always enjoyed The Lost Boys since I first watched it about a decade ago. A friend of mine who was into vampires introduced me to it and at the time I was impressed. This was also the same friend who introduced me to The Monster Squad, so you can understand the kind of semi-kid friendly horror he was a big fan of. Though my genres of choice in my earlier years were more along the lines of superheroes and Schwarzenegger explosion-fests, these two movies could be considered responsible for planting seeds that would eventually cultivate and reach the fruition you know as Anubis today. Sure, my chancing upon the third issue of Adventure Comics' four color adaptation of Re-Animator was the catalyst, but The Lost Boys definitely had a part is creating the base elements of that moment… as well as my parents’ idea to expose me to the Puppet Master movies back before Full Moon was on it’s knees trying to make enough money to keep up on the rental fees for their recording equipment.

Again, I love this flick, but now that I'm more experienced in the mystical arts of horror and criticism, I have to wonder about the motivations of our monsters in question. Sure, the gore gurgling prissy-pantsed vamps of Interview With The Vampire may have done nothing but sit around bitching and having homosexual domestic disputes for centuries, but David and friends spend their time slackin' on the boardwalk and showing off their perms! Yeah, I know it was the '80s and it was a different time and a different place, but guys with perms was never a "cool” thing, vampires or not. On the other hand, Alex Winter, well, he'll always be Alex Winter...

As for the vampires themselves, they're interesting as some of their features set them apart from your normal cinema vamps. First off is the absence of crucifixes from the arsenal of anti-vampire tools for the Frog Bros. It's obvious that holy objects do harm them, as noted by the bathtub full of holy water; however the classic silver cross is never flashed. Come to think of it, I may have even seen a silver cross or two amidst the '80s jewelry the vampire gang wore... though that was probably just pewter anyway. Second and most notably for me were the monsters' bat-like traits. These guys don't sleep in coffins or transform into winged pigeon rats of the night, but instead spend their days suspended from the ceiling of a cave by their gangly rodent feet. As for how they fly, we never see shots of them careening through the evening sky, as Schumacher's direction depicts well their first person flight path views, eliminating any need for some bad Superman blue screen scenes of Keifer Sutherland laying on a table and pretending to sail amidst clouds, using the old "less is more" mentality... something Joel should've kept in mind years later with, yep, you guessed it, Batman & Robin. I had a discussion with a few friends (and yes, they were online, so shut up) in concern to the best vampire movies of the '80s, and as always the topic went off track from the quality of the movies to their scare factor, to which vampire movies score a zero because everyone's just a GQ model with plastic teeth, especially when you think about The Lost Boys. After all, what's so scary about a small contingent of rejects from Ratt?

All things aside, this is the definitive '80s bloodsucker flick, superior in my opinion to even cult favorites Near Dark and Fright Night, neither of which are bad, they just don't make my intestines tickle and my nose hairs spasm the way this movie does. If nothing else, The Lost Boys stands for me as the only installment of the Corey Daze that I can sit through without hanging my head in shame for viewing it. Not only that, but it's also one of the few Keifer Sutherland roles I can say the same about. Oh, and as far as Joel Schumacher movies go, the previous statement holds the truest here. Shit, I can't even say that name without the desire to scrape rusty razor blades down my tongue. And typing it? Let's just say I keep a big bottle of Nitric Acid next to my keyboard... speaking of which, this is gonna hurt. Well, at least it gets rid of those pesky fingerprints as a plus. Life of crime, here I come!

I must go and administer first aid (after I watch Red Sonja), so I'll leave you with this imparted knowledge, which I gained from this movie: always remember guys, the way to a woman's heart is through stolen issues of “Sad Sack”, though if you're looking for the easiest way into her panties I'd go another route, as the comics always seem to distract them from Back Seat Olympics…

H.O.P.E.L.E.S.S. Rating:
- Plenty of cheesy fun and gore flinging to make it into any halfway decent movie party. If your friends are the type to do theme parties, this one fits perfectly into such gimmicks as "Corey Movies", "Bloodsucker Fun Time" and especially "I Love '80s Horror"!

If You Liked This Flick, Check Out: The Monster Squad or Fright Night

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