The Lost Boys is a vampire movie that was released in 1987 and even after almost 30 years it still remains one of the most legendary movies about vampires, despite the fact that many other similar movies appeared after it. The movie became so successful that it won a Saturn Award for the Best Horror Movie and gathered over 32 million dollars in the American Box Office. The Lost Boys changed the perspective and images of vampires, and has made vampires more attractive by making them almost sex symbols. It is even possible to say that probably without The Lost Boys the movies and the books Twilight, that also became legendary, would have never existed.
In terms of the plot, the movie tells a story of two teenage brothers who move with his recently divorced mother to a town in the state of California. While the younger brother, whose name is Sam, make friends with two comic store assistants Edward and Alan, the older brother Michael falls for the girl Star, who belong to the gang of vampires, the leader of which is David. After a while Michael starts turning into vampires, and his brother Sam appeares to be the only one, who can help him and save. Though it is considered to be a vampire movie, it is first of all a love story and very emotional movie.
While analyzing and comparing The Lost Boys with other movies on similar topics, it is possible to notice some specific characteristics and features of thi movie that make him unique and so legendary. The first feature is that this movie can be called very realistic. Even though this movie about such creatures as vampires that do not exists in real time, The Lost Boys is very believable movie. The main credit of it definitely belongs to the star team and the cast. They make the audience to believe their emotions and feelings. For example, it is impossible not to believe Michael and his genuine feelings, when he falls in love with Star and is ready to become a vampire in order to be with her. It is quiet easy to believe even sillier characters in the movie, such as Edgar Frog for example, because he is very believable in the context of this particular story.
Another specific feature of this movie is the lack of blood in it. In comparison with other thrillers and horror movies that are full of bloody scenes and gory, The Lost Boys is relatively toned down. However, there is nothing wrong with it because since there are les bloody scenes, there are more room instead for development of characters, their relationships between each other and showing up the srtory and the movie’s brilliant script. It makes the movie less horror and more family adventure film.
It is also interesting to note such a feature in The Lost Boys as interrelations between the characters and the importance of male bonding, which add to the movie a little bit of homoerotic tension. In contrast to other typical vampie movies, where a usual victim of strong and powerful vampires is a woman, like in the Twilight for example, the victim in The Lost Boys was a boy. In this movie Michel is seduced by David, a leader of the vampire gang, into drinking blood by beginning his transformation into a vampire. The director of the movie Schumacher decided to choose this perspective in order to create a little bit of sexual tension because usually the transformation intro vampire is considered to be quiet a sexual act. Therefore, it is possible to say that the atmosphere in The Lost Boys is a little bit homosexual. However, at the same time, it is not the first and the only one example, in which one male charater is being turned into vampire by another male. Another popular example is The Interview With a Vampire created by Anne Rice.
It is worth noting that the topic of brotherhood is one of the keys topic in the movie. The evidence of it is the fact that women are almost forgotten in The Lost Boys, and play only two major roles – a sister and mother. Despite the fact that there is a love story in the movie between two major characters Michael and Star, the topic of brotherhood still remains the main one because all male characters share a very strong bond. This bond is demonstrated through the relationships between vampires themselves, who are believed to be the sons of Max; relationship of The Frogs brothers and of course a couple of two main brothers and characters of the movie – Michael and Sam. The main and the most significant part of the plot revolves around the betrayal of Michael of Sam from from attemting to attack him when Michael gets too great. Same made a choice to help Sam and save him from the killing obsession of The Frogs. The brotherhood bonding is also demonstrated with the help of words in the soundtrack for the movie – “love is with your brother”. This phase is repeated several times in order to reinforce and confirm the importance of these words and attract the attention of the audience to the question and the topic of brotherhood.
However, even though brotherhood is one of the main topic in the movie and brothers’ bonding is always emphasized, a family itself and family values do not play a very significant role in The Lost Boys. Familes showed in the movie cannot be considered as very solid, united or sturdy. Take, for example, the mother of two main characters Sam and Michael. Due to a difficult and very messy divorcer, Lucy decides t move with her two sons to California and start a new life. In general, there is not so much attention in movie paid at families. For example, though Lucy and the sons is an example of very calm, stable family who are beginning their new life in a new place, they are not considered to be very intereting for the audience.
A very significant element in the movie, with the help of which specific atmosphere is created is the soundtrack Cry Little Syster. The song consists of a combination of choral vocals that repeat religious phrases pronounced or rather sung by children voice. These vocals created a great effect in the final scene of the movie, in which Michel finally kills David, the leader of the vampire band. The death of David that is accompanied by the sounds of Cry Little Syster provides audience with the understanding of who David was and how he looked like before he was transformed against his will into a vampire by Max. It is a very emotional and touhing scene because this scene together with the lyrics of the soundtrack demonstrate the audience the horrible truth about the vampires in the movie: they are all jut little missing and lost children, who are shunned by the leader. Instead of being horrible and dangerous mosters, they are rather innocent children, who were left with no choice. Thus, their death in the movie is like transformation back to children and to their essence.
The Lost Boys became such a populat and legendary movie that after several decades the movie was released, it was decided to create the sequel that came out in 2008 and was titled Lost Boys: The Tribe. There were other characters in this story – a professional surfer Chris Emerson and his sister Nicole, who moved to Luna Bay in order to live there together with the aunt. However, though the characters are different, the idea is still the same – vampire love story and the bonding between siblings. Two years later one more sequel was released and received the title Lost Boys: The Thirst. It tells about infamous vampre fighters – Frog Brothers fighting with the alpha vampire, who is going to turn the population of boys and girls of the towon of San Cazador into an army of vampires. Besides the movies there are also for comic books Lost Boys: Reign of Frogs that also became quiet popular. (The Lost Boys)
In general, I would say I really like this movie and especially the idea and the perspective of its director Joel Schumacher. He accomplished to break the stereoptypes about vampire and teenage movies that existed in 1980 and were based on such elements as sex, good-looking characters, physical attractiveness and etc. Instead of presenting kid vampires on motorcycles, he became an author of one of the best ideas on vampire movies that was turned into the cult and classic for the next decades, and also became a foundation for many other legendary sagas about vampires. The movie itself has everything that a typial vampire movie should have in order to entertain audience: a talented and charismatic cast, interesting script, lover story, horror, great sense of humor and touching and very emotional music. Therefore, it is possible to say that The Lost Boys should be in the must-watch list of all vampire stories’ lovers.
Works Cited
The Lost Boys. Dir. Joel Schumacher. Perf. Jason Patrick, Corey Haim, and Dianne West. Warner Bros, 1987. Film
