31 July 1987 (released)
13 March 2010
"Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It's fun to be a vampire."
With the tragic and untimely death of actor Corey Haim this week, there would no doubt have been thousands of fans across the world mourning his sad demise with their own personal tributes.
For me, there was no better way than to take a trip back to my teenage years and watch what I consider to be one of his finest celluloid moments.
The Lost Boys tells the story of a group of blood-suckers who terrorise the small Californian town of Santa Clara.
That is until Sam Feldman (Haim), his older brother Michael (Jason Patric) and his newly-divorced mother (Dianne Wiest) move there to live with his grandfather, a cantankerous old taxidermist, who knows only too well what fanged secrets the coastal town holds.
Sam befriends brothers Edgar and Alan Frog (Haim's off-screen best friend Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander), who declare themselves as vampire hunters and try to convince our young hero that the undead walk among the humans of Santa Carla.
Sam laughs off this notion until he is forced to take action when his brother starts turning into one, having drank the leader David's (Kiether Sutherland) blood believing it to be wine.
Swallowing his pride, Sam joins forces with the Frogs as they set out to rid their picturesque town of David and his clan, little knowing that the one that actually rules them all is in their midst - and almost in Sam's family.
The film, which despite being 23 years old has dated well, boasts some fantastic performances from all of its cast, and while many faded into obscurity afterwards, some went on to make it big, Kiefer Sutherland and Dianne Wiest being two of them, and even Alex Winter, who went on to become more famously known as Bill S. Preston in the Bill & Ted movies.
The Lost Boys became not only a cult classic for my generation, but also almost bordered on an obsession among myself and my contemporaries.
Whether it was the sexy and cool vampires or the cute, heroic teenagers who set out to destroy them, we played the movie over and over again until we could almost recite the script to perfection; "They're only noodles, Michael", "Holy shit! It's the attack of Eddie Munster!", and one of my personal favourites - "Death By Stereo."
It certainly became the cinematic theme to our adolescence, but of course, less we forget the defining soundtrack, which spawned classics such as Echo and the Bunnymen's Doors cover of People Are Strange, the haunting theme song Cry Little Sister by Gerard McMann, and Good Times, the duet by by INXS and Jimmy Barnes, frontman with Aussie rock band Cold Chisel.
With the recent influx of vampire-based movies and TV shows, including the Twilight series, True Blood and The Vampire Diaries, many will probably be sick of the sight of yet more creatures of the night.
This film is not only a must-see, and will, without a shadow of a doubt, always reside in my Top Ten, but in my humble opinion, set the mould for the shape of things to come regarding its genre. It's certainly a film that everyone of a certain age (i.e. mine) should have in their collection.
Sadly, Corey Haim died on Wednesday March 10th with a number of straight-to-DVD or made-for-TV movies at the top of his CV. But putting them aside, The Lost Boys was his crowning glory, a film that defined him among his Hollywood peers and will keep him in our memories for every more.
