The Lost Boys

A March 5, 1985 Variety news item announced that the independent production company Producers Sales Organization (PSO) bought first-time screenwriters Janice Fischer and James Jeremias' Lost Boys script for $400,000 on February 20, 1985.[1] PSO announced their acquisition of the project at the American Film Market in 1985. Later Warner Bros. joined the project, taking over domestic distribution and some foreign territories.[1]

The film's title is a reference to the characters featured in J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan stories, who – like vampires – never grow old. Jeremias said, "I had read Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire, and in that there was a 200-year-old vampire trapped in the body of a 12-year-old girl. Since Peter Pan had been one of my all-time favourite stories, I thought, 'What if the reason Peter Pan came out at night and never grew up and could fly was because he was a vampire?'"[2] According to academic William Patrick Day, the central theme of The Lost Boys, "organised around loose allusions to Peter Pan", is the tension surrounding the Emerson family and the world of contemporary adolescence.[3] The film was originally set to be directed by Richard Donner, and Fischer and Jeremias' screenplay was modelled on Donner's recent hit The Goonies (1985).[4] In this way the film was envisioned as more of a juvenile vampire adventure with 13 or 14 year old vampires, while the Frog brothers were "chubby 8 year-old Cub Scouts" and the character of Star was a young boy.[5][4] When Donner committed to other projects, Joel Schumacher was approached to direct the film although Donner eventually received credit as an executive producer. He came up with the idea of making the film sexier and more adult, bringing on screenwriter Jeffrey Boam to retool the script and raise the ages of the characters.[2][6]

Director Joel Schumacher said he had "one of the greatest [casts] in the world. They are what make the film." Most of the younger cast members were relatively unknown. Schumacher and Marion Dougherty met with many candidates.[6] Jason Patric was approached early on by Schumacher to play Michael, but Patric had no interest in doing a vampire film and turned it down "many times". Eventually he was won over by Schumacher's vision and his promise to allow the cast a lot of "creative input" in making the film. According to Kiefer Sutherland, Patric "was really instrumental" in adapting the script with Schumacher and shaping the film.[7]

Schumacher envisioned the character of Star as being a waifish blonde, similar to Meg Ryan, but he was convinced by Jason Patric to consider Jami Gertz, who had just worked with Patric in Solarbabies (1986). Schumacher was impressed, but only at Patric's insistence did he finally cast Gertz.[6] Schumacher was surprised when his first choice for the role of Lucy, Dianne Wiest, accepted the role, as she had just recently won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Hannah and Her Sisters (1986).[6]

After seeing Kiefer Sutherland's portrayal of Tim in At Close Range, Schumacher arranged a reading with him at which they got on very well. Sutherland had just completed work on Stand by Me when he was offered the role of David. Schumacher said Sutherland "can do almost anything. He's a born character actor. You can see it in The Lost Boys. He has the least amount of dialogue in the movie, but his presence is extraordinary."[6]

Most of the film was shot in Santa Cruz, California, starting on June 2, 1986, and ending on June 23, 1986 after 21 days of filming. Locations include the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, the Pogonip open space preserve, and the surrounding Santa Cruz Mountains. Other locations included a cliffside on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles County, used for the entrance to the vampire cave, and a valley in Santa Clarita near Magic Mountain where introductory shots were filmed for the scene where Michael and the Lost Boys hang from a railway bridge.[8] Stage sets included the vampire cave, built on Stage 12 of the Warner Bros. lot, and a recreation of the interior and exterior of the Pogonip clubhouse on Stage 15, which stood in for Grandpa's house.[6]

Sutherland broke his right wrist while doing a wheelie on his motorcycle and had to wear gloves on set to conceal the cast. His motorcycle for the movie was adapted so he could operate it with his left hand only.[7]

The Lost Boys opened at #2 during its opening weekend, with a domestic gross of over $5.2 million. It went on to gross a domestic total of over $32.2 million against an $8.5 million budget.[9][10]

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 77% based on 77 reviews, with an average rating of 6.4/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "Flawed but eminently watchable, Joel Schumacher's teen vampire thriller blends horror, humor, and plenty of visual style with standout performances from a cast full of young 1980s stars."[11] On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 63 out of 100 based on 16 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[12] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.[13]

Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half out of four stars, praising the cinematography and "a cast that's good right down the line," but ultimately describing Lost Boys as a triumph of style over substance and "an ambitious entertainment that starts out well but ends up selling its soul."[14] Caryn James of The New York Times called Dianne Wiest's character a "dopey mom" and Barnard Hughes's character "a caricature of a feisty old Grandpa." She found the film more of a comedy than a horror and the finale "funny".[15] Elaine Showalter commented that "the film brilliantly portrays vampirism as a metaphor for the kind of mythic male bonding that resists growing up, commitment, especially marriage."[16] Variety panned the film, calling it "a horrifically dreadful vampire teensploitation entry that daringly advances the theory that all those missing children pictured on garbage bags and milk cartons are actually the victims of bloodsucking bikers."[17]

It won a Saturn Award for Best Horror Film in 1987.[18]

The Lost Boys has been credited with helping shift depictions of vampires in popular culture and bringing a more youthful, sexier appeal to the vampire genre.[19][20][21] This inspired subsequent films like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.[22] The scene in which David transforms noodles into worms was directly referenced in the 2014 vampire mockumentary film What We Do in the Shadows.[23] The film inspired the song of the same name by the Finnish gothic rock band The 69 Eyes.[24] Gunship's 2018 Dark All Day music video and lyrics reference the themes and practical effects, on top of collaborating with Tim Cappello.[25]

The music video for "Into the Summer", a song released by American rock band Incubus on August 23, 2019, pays homage to the film.[26]

Event organizers Monopoly Events created "the biggest Lost Boys reunion ever" in 2019 at their annual horror fan convention, For the Love of Horror, which included Kiefer Sutherland, Jason Patric, Alex Winter, Jamison Newlander, and Billy Wirth along with musicians from the film, G Tom Mac, and Tim Cappello, who were reunited for the first time in over 30 years. G Tom Mac and Tim Cappello performed separate live music sets on the event stage to a vast crowd of fans on both days of the event, while Cappello performed a third time at the event after-party. All of the celebrities posed together for photographs in a purpose-built "cave" set modeled on the vampire cave seen in The Lost Boys original movie which was complete with a poster of Jim Morrison, a bottle of fake blood and David the vampire's wheelchair.[27]

The Frog Brothers make a (non-canonical) cameo in Jenny Colgan's 2001 novel, Looking For Andrew McCarthy, in which they are now police officers and make brief, ominous reference to their past work with "the supernatural".[28]

Due to his past fantasy novels and horror short stories, Craig Shaw Gardner was given a copy of the script and asked to write a novelization to accompany the film's release. At the time, Gardner was, like the Frog Brothers, managing a comic book store as well as writing.[33]

The novelization was released in paperback by Berkley Publishing[34] and is 220 pages long. It includes several scenes later dropped from the film, such as Michael working as a trash collector for money to buy his leather jacket. It expands the roles of the opposing gang, the Surf Nazis, who were seen as nameless victims of the vampires in the film. It also includes several tidbits of vampire lore, such as not being able to cross running water and salt sticking to their forms.

David makes a reappearance in the 2008 comic book series Lost Boys: Reign of Frogs, which serves as a sequel to the first film and a prequel to Lost Boys: The Tribe.

In October 2016, Vertigo released a comic book miniseries, The Lost Boys, where Michael, Sam, and the Frog Brothers must protect Star from her sisters, the Blood Belles.[35]

1. "Good Times" by Jimmy Barnes and INXS – 3:49 (The Easybeats)
2. "Lost in the Shadows (The Lost Boys)" by Lou Gramm – 6:17
3. "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" by Roger Daltrey – 6:09 (Elton John/Bernie Taupin)
4. "Laying Down the Law" by Jimmy Barnes and INXS – 4:24
5. "People Are Strange" by Echo & the Bunnymen – 3:36 (The Doors)
6. "Cry Little Sister (Theme from The Lost Boys)" by Gerard McMann – 4:46
7. "Power Play" by Eddie & the Tide – 3:57
8. "I Still Believe" by Tim Cappello – 3:42 (The Call)
9. "Beauty Has Her Way" by Mummy Calls – 3:56
10. "To the Shock of Miss Louise" by Thomas Newman – 1:21