The Lost Boys
Director: Joel Schumacher
Year Released: 1987
Rating: 1.5
A pseudo-hippie family, led by single mother Dianne Wiest, moves to a city in California where androgynous vampires with glam rock hair have a habit of swooping down from the sky and eating the inhabitants. The 'meta' subplot of the Coreys (Haim and Feldman) being aware of how to kill the undead because of comic books (holy water, wooden stakes through hearts) is a pomo-populist wink to those in the audience with knowledge of the genre - and allows the screenwriters to rehash the old clichés safely - and most of this is so tacky and comically inept that it's hard to think of it as much more than an '80s artifact (like Garbage Pail Kids, Top Gun and Keds sneakers). I suppose it's fair to give credit to Michael Chapman for his liberal horror-show use of fog and red filters - too bad about the rest.
