Tag Line : Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It's fun to be a vampire.

One of the better vampire pics to emerge in recent years was this tale of modern day vampires living in a small Californian coastal town, which stars a young Corey Haim and a teenage Jason Patrick as a couple of brothers who, with their mother (Dianne Wiest), have just moved to their grandfathers house in Santa Carla.

Santa Carla is a small coastal resort, which would be a fun place to live if it wasn't also known as the murder capital of the world. But it isn't too long before the two are making new friends. Michael, the older brother (Jason Patrick), falls in with a crowd teenage punks, led by a chap named David (played by non-other than Keifer Sutherland) after being attracted to one of the female members named Star (Jami Gertz).

Meanwhile, the younger brother Sam (Corey Haim) befriends a couple of lads, Edgar and Alan Frog (Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander), whose hippy degenerate parents run the local comic book shop.

It doesn't take too long though for Sam to realise that there's something amiss with the gang his older brother is hanging round with. Particularly after he finds his brother has no reflection in the mirror and can fly. Yep it turns out that David's gang are a bunch of trendy young vampires, and now Michael is one of them.

Fortunately the frog brothers claim to be vampire experts, and so set out to try and find who the head vampire is and eliminate them before Michael can make his first kill. This has disastrous, but highly amusing, results at one of his mothers dinner parties when they believe the head vampire is the chap Sam's mother is dating.

Michael however has decided that a vampire's life is not for him, after watching David's gang chow down on a bunch of surf Nazi's, and so decides to help his younger brother and friends wipe out the vampire nest and try and rescue Star. Leading to a hilarious action packed final confrontation, as the vampires attack and Sam and the Frog brothers attempt to fend them off using bows & arrows and water pistols loaded with holy water.

Produced by Richard Donner, who gave us the Lethal Weapon series, and directed by Joel Schumacher, who also directed some of the later Batman sequels, the film is a thoroughly enjoyable tongue-in-cheek, action packed romp, that successfully combines horror, humour and action in the right proportions, with an excellent rock and roll soundtrack to boot! It is most definitely one of the movies I more fondly remember from my teenage years.

Overall Marks : 8/10.

Other Information.

• Alternate tag line, "Being Wild is in their blood".

• The films title "The Lost Boys" was a reference to the companions of Peter Pan, who remained forever young.

• Director Joel Schumacher, as well as directing some of the later Batman sequels, has also directed the 1985 teen pic "St Elmo's Fire" and also gave us the horror pic "Flatliners", the action film, "8mm" and the controversial drama "Time to Kill".

• Producer Richard Donner, who is best known for his work on the "Leathal Weapon" series, was one of the main creators behind the "Tales from the Crypt" TV series. During his long distinguished career, he has also directed the action pic "Conspiracy Theory", the comic cowboy remake of "Maverick" and the films "Superman" and even "The Omen" (now there's a sharp contrast). He has also worked in television, with the TV shows "Six Million Dollar Man", "Kojak", "Man from Uncle" and "The Banana Splits" (eh?).

• Jason Patrick has worked in numerous stage and screen productions. His only other notable movie role however was in the film "Speed 2" with Sandra Bullock.

• Keifer Sutherland (Donald's son) also worked with director Joel Schumacher in the film "Flatliners" and "A Time to Kill". As well as starring in numerous other films he is probably best known for his roles in the "Young Guns" movies.

• Corey Feldman previously played Tommy in "Friday the 13th Part 4 : The Final Chapter" and Corey Haim had previously been in the Steven King movie "Silver Bullet".

• Dianne Weist has had a very varied acting career, having starred in "Footloose" , "Hannah and her Sisters", the comedy "Parenthood" and the fantasy pic "Edward Scissorhands". She is probably also known for her role as the District Attorney Nora Lewin in the cop show "Law & Order".

• The movie was actually filmed on location in the town of Santa Cruz in California.

Cast & Crew.

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Buy the UK DVD box set (pts 1 & 2).

Buy the CD Soundtrack.

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