The Lost Boys

After reading Goat’s review, Ezra decides to weigh in on this iconic vampire movie.

The Lost Boys is probably my favorite vampire movie of all time, if I’m being honest with myself. It’s certainly the one I’ve seen the most over the years, ever since that wonderful first late-night TV viewing as a child still young enough to be a bit disturbed by the over-the-top bloodletting in its third act, and more than a bit gleeful at getting away with watching what I perceived as a real hardcore, dangerous horror movie. As an adult I realize it is closer to The Goonies with Vampires than a really hardcore, dangerous horror movie, but I love it nonetheless for that. 

Even things about the movie that invite criticism are pluses to me, like the wonderfully goofy dialogue (especially the one-liners of younger brother Sam, a “fashion victim” teen who apparently has Bruce Vilanch on his writing staff) and the way it plays fast and loose with the rules of vampire lore (inviting a vampire in is not only required but also makes the vamp impervious to garlic, holy water, being invisible in mirrors, etc.), not to mention basic physics. For example, remember how you need a hammer to drive a stake through a vampire’s heart in, like, every other vampire movie? Nah. Corey Feldman, one hand, one shot, all the way through the other side. Farewell, Bill Preston, Esq. Likewise, an arrow fired by the mighty Corey Haim is enough to launch bloodsucker Dwayne (Billy Wirth) off his feet and halfway across the room to his iconic “death by stereo.” 

It’s all a lot of good, gory fun that I like to revisit nearly every Spooktober, and it is that sense of silly fun that I share with my esteemed colleague Goat, who previously reviewed the movie here at Ruthless using our 80’s Action format. As he points out in that review, The Lost Boys is more of a teen horror-comedy than an action movie, but it is one of the most quintessentially 80s movies ever made and I agree that the format makes perfect sense for it. Where I have to respectfully but emphatically disagree is Goat’s assertion that there is little to no Homoeroticism or Stupid Political Content in the movie, and it is upon those aspects that we will focus for the remainder of this review. 

Firstly, The Lost Boys strikes me as pretty gay even for a vampire movie, which is already a notoriously campy, melodramatic, and generally fabulous subgenre. It may not be as steamy as Interview with the Vampire, but it’s a lot closer to that end of the spectrum than, say, From Dusk Till Dawn, a fiercely heterosexual vampire movie that is another longtime seasonal favorite of mine. You can tell just how gay The Lost Boys leans less than a minute in, when this title appears onscreen: “A Joel Schumacher Film.” This is the guy who would put nipples on the batsuit a decade later, after all. 

But seriously, folks, Tim Cappello (the famous Oily Saxophone Beefcake playing on the boardwalk when Michael first glimpses Star) is merely the most obviously homoerotic element of this movie. He is probably the most prominent non-porn image you would find if you were to Google “lost boys gay,” but I’m not going to check because I can only imagine how many non-non-porn results I’d get, and I’m trying to finish writing this review today. Even as a child falling in love with this movie for the first time in the 90s, it didn’t take me long to realize Sam (Haim) is the gayest teen in an 80’s horror movie since Jesse in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. The first thing that tipped me off about this flamboyantly dressed, MTV-obsessed, bubble-bath-taking city boy was the big sexy Rob Lowe poster on his closet door; much like my previous observation about Freddy’s Revenge, the production design team knew Sam was gay even if no one else did. 

To be fair, Sam does have a poster of Molly Ringwald on the opposite wall, but that one is a tasteful medium shot from The Breakfast Club, while the Rob Lowe poster is clearly a beefcake photo, complete with exposed midriff and smoldering gaze. One imagines the Ringwald poster is what Sam aspires to (oh, to be a pouty rich girl, so popular the school would probably shut down if she didn’t show up… sigh), and the Lowe poster is what he jacks to. 

Sam mocks Michael (Jason Patric) for being at the mercy of his sex glands when he chases after a girl (something Sam will never do) before getting cruised by the Frog brothers in the comic book store where they meet. Edgar (Feldman) and Alan (Jamison Newlander) check out the ostentatious newcomer as he peacocks for them to the tune of “Laying Down the Law” by INXS (the lyrics on the soundtrack at this exact moment: “Just a whiff of corruption / The tip of the iceberg”). It’s quite the meet-cute, as Sam proves his comic book fan bonafides and gets a flirty sneer from Alan and a sexy nickname (Mr. Phoenix) from Edgar. 

Even a superficial glance at the movie would undoubtedly single out the bubble bath scene as one of the gayest elements (though trailing far behind Oily Saxophone Beefcake, of course), as Sam sings along to the falsetto lyrics of “Ain’t Got No Home”: “I ain’t got a man… I’m a lonely girl….” Gay is different from homoerotic, though, and far greater than the sexual tension between Sam and the Frog Brothers in their first scene together, and certainly greater than the passion between Michael and Star, is the love that dare not speak its name shared by Michael and David (Kiefer Sutherland), which is the true John Matrix/Bennett 80s Action homoerotic antagonism at the heart of The Lost Boys. 

There is a flirtatious rivalry between the two right from the start, with poor Star as the beard they pass between them under the guise of a love triangle. David never seems to feel betrayed by Star’s relationship with Michael because she was never important to him in the way Michael is, and there are no shortage of smoldering looks between them during the motorcycle race, the ritual of Michael joining the gang in their cave, and especially right before Michael’s true initiation, when he witnesses David and the others feeding at the campfire. This scene is a male-on-male orgy of violence, with spurting blood and orgasmic expressions of joy at the rending of flesh and feeding of fluids, a far cry from the steamy but gauzily tasteful sex scene between Michael and Star (the kind of softcore romance novel shit you might expect from, again, the man who put nipples on the batsuit). By the end of the slaughter, Michael’s fangs are just as fully erect as the rest of the boys’ but he represses his urges, convincing himself it is Star and not David that he truly wants. 

The final confrontation between David and Michael is a prime example of 80s Action Homoeroticism, in many ways nearly identical to that of the aforementioned John Matrix and Bennett in Commando. By this point in the movie, neither David nor Michael needs the girl anymore. “It’s too late,” David huskily whispers into Michael’s ear as they embrace in a death grip. “My blood is in your veins.” “So is mine!” Michael shouts back as he impales David on a set of antlers in his grandfather’s taxidermy workshop. David has a steamy, shuddering orgasm of a death (a reverse shot of Michael as he watches indicates he may be cumming too), fluid dripping down the twin prongs shoved through his torso, a fitting replacement for Commando’s phallic steam pipe. 

Of course, as important as Homoeroticism is to the 80’s Action canon (and, as I have just argued, to The Lost Boys), equally important to both is the Stupid Political Content, and Reagan’s America is absolutely baked into this movie, especially in the early montage of freaks and jobless ne’er-do-wells of Santa Carla, the Murder Capital of the World, according to graffiti on a billboard Sam, Michael, and their mom, Lucy (Dianne Wiest) see as they drive into town. “Are there any jobs around here?” Michael inquires of one local, only to be told, “Nothing legal.” 

The titular vampire gang represent the youth threat to America as seen by the Reagan administration, except that they’re all white. They are introduced by a clash with law enforcement, and the scourge of Crime in the Streets is so dire in Santa Carla that we later see that same boardwalk cop’s face on one of the dozens of MISSING posters plastered seemingly everywhere in town. When Lucy meets Max (Edward Herrmann) at his video store, he seems to be the upright, Reaganesque hero she needs, with his Zero Tolerance policy for the “wild kids,” while Lucy’s liberal leanings (“We were young once, too; they dress better”) open the door for evil to come into her life and the lives of her sons. 

Just Say No is the primary message of the Stupid Political Content in this movie, as drugs and other accoutrements of the hippie counterculture represent an insidious force encroaching on America. This is what the hippies, with all their un-American dope-smoking, motorcycle-riding, long-haired liberalism have wrought! It is the nightmare of an old conservative codger who can’t tell the difference between hippie and punk, but fears and despises both. 

Marijuana is literally the gateway drug that leads to Michael becoming a half-vampire (at which point he begins to behave like a heroin addict)—he takes a toke from the “appetizer” David offers him, then hallucinates maggots and worms in the Chinese food they share, which leads directly to him being tricked into drinking David’s blood; like the dealer giving away the first dose for free, now Michael is hooked. Obviously, David is most likely controlling Michael’s hallucinations with his vampiric powers, but it is telling that he pointedly offers him weed first. As Michael finishes drinking the blood, the movie gives us a thoroughly druggy montage, complete with a giant Jim Morrison poster looking on in approval from beyond the grave; Michael even looks a bit like Morrison, and one can easily imagine an alternate universe in which Patric won that role over Val Kilmer. From the moment Michael falls through the haze under the railroad bridge and into his own bed, the metaphor for drug addiction becomes obvious enough to be text, rather than subtext: “Are you freebasing, Mike? Inquiring minds want to know.” Michael is terse and surly to his loved ones, stays in bed all day, doesn’t want to eat—all good signs of a bad habit. 

The Frog brothers bear a strong resemblance to the more modern right-wing fringe lunatic, the doomsday prepper survivalist Libertarian set. “We have it on good authority that ghouls and werewolves occupy high positions in City Hall,” Edgar avers at one point. The brothers take a hardline vigilante stance against all these junkie oddball monsters: “First come, first staked.” Reagan undoubtedly would have condoned them just as much as Harry Callahan. 

On a side note: are the Frog brothers’ parents dead and just on display, Weekend at Bernie’s-style? We only ever see them twice, each time in the identical apparently unconscious pose at the comic book store, just sort of haphazardly propped up against one another. Perhaps they’ve been taxidermied by Grandpa (Barnard Hughes). I never really thought of it until this latest viewing, but I’m calling it now: the Frog brothers murdered their parents; they are brutal killers and they will kill again. 

Ultimately, Max is much like the titular character of The Stepfather in his evil subversion (by liberal writers/directors) of the traditional family values held dear in Reagan’s America. “I told you,” he says to Lucy in the climactic scene, his true vampiric face finally revealed, “boys need a mother.” He would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for his “wild kids” botching everything. 

In the end, the true conservative hero is Grandpa, upholder of the Rules and restorer of Order. He may be a semi-recluse who grows pot and shares a weird hobby with Norman Bates, but he knows the truth about all the “bad elements” out there. “One thing I never could stomach about living in Santa Carla,” he intones in the final scene, with all the quiet, stoic rage of his generation: “All the damn vampires.”