The Lost Boys
Short description
The Lost Boys follows two brothers, Michael and Sam, who move with their mother, Lucy, to the California coastal town of Santa Carla. While Sam falls in with two local boys who claim to hunt vampires, Michael becomes involved with a mysterious young woman and the motorcycle gang she runs with, a group that keeps a dark secret. As Michael begins to change in ways that alarm his family, Sam and his new allies set out to save him.
Joel Schumacher directed the film, the third of the twenty-one features he made, arriving between St. Elmo's Fire and Flatliners. Jeffrey Boam, Janice Fischer and James Jeremias wrote the screenplay, and Harvey Bernhard produced it for Warner Bros. Pictures. Jason Patric and Corey Haim play the brothers, with Dianne Wiest as their mother, Barnard Hughes as their grandfather, Edward Herrmann as Max and Kiefer Sutherland as David. The large credited company numbers thirty-five cast members and 122 crew members.
Made for about nine million dollars, the film took in roughly thirty-two million worldwide, a solid return on its budget. On IMDb it holds a 7.2 rating from about 177,000 votes, and on TMDB a 7.1 from roughly 2,400 votes. A critics' rating of 6.3 from seventy-nine reviews sits below those audience scores. Running ninety-seven minutes, it blends horror with comedy, drama, romance and thriller elements.
What's left behind the scenes
- Originally, Richard Donner was going to direct the film.
- Initially, Keenan Wynn was considered for the role of the grandfather, however, the actor passed away on October 14, 1986, just before filming began.
- Then the choice fell on John Carradine, a veteran of vampire films, but it turned out that the actor was seriously ill and unable to film.
- Initially, it was intended that David (Kiefer Sutherland) would only wear black gloves while riding a motorcycle. However, while riding his motorcycle for leisure near the set, Kiefer Sutherland fell and broke his arm. Because of this, he had to wear gloves in some other scenes as well to hide the cast.
- The film was subsequently novelized by American writer Craig Shaw Gardner. The book includes several episodes that were not included in the film.
- The names of the Frogg brothers, Edgar and Alan, are a reference to the name of the legendary master of literary horror, a classic of American literature, Edgar Allan Poe.
- The original draft of the screenplay, written by Janis Fischer and James Jeremaya, was a purely children's scary story. The vampires in it were a group of mischievous kids, the Frog brothers were 8-year-old boy scouts, and the Star was a boy, with a love story, naturally, absent.
- When Joel Schumacher was brought on to direct the film, he disliked the children's concept and told the producers he would only take on the project if he was allowed to change the script's concept, making the children teenagers, as he believed this version would be much more interesting and sensual.
- The film's opening credits list actress Kelly Jo Minter, despite her having only one noticeable scene in the entire movie, in a video store. The reason is that her role was originally much larger – but almost all of it was cut during editing. Scenes with Kelly Jo Minter were included in the bonus materials of the Western two-disc collector's edition released in 2004.
- In the film's finale, David, pierced by two stakes, does not turn to dust like the other vampires. Although Max later states otherwise, it was intended that David was not completely destroyed. He was supposed to reappear in a sequel that was never made.
- Originally, the film was not supposed to end with the grandfather's joking line by the refrigerator. After that, there was to be a transition to a scene where the surviving vampires gather in an abandoned hotel. The final shot of the film was to be an image of a drawing on the wall, made at the beginning of the 20th century, depicting Max looking exactly as he did in the film. All of this was in an early version of the script but was not implemented.
- In the vampires' cave, you can see an image of Jim Morrison – a legendary rock idol, leader of The Doors, and author and performer of the original version of the song “People Are Strange,” which is featured in the film performed by Echo & the Bunnymen.
- On Sam's closet door, you can see a poster of actor Rob Lowe – this is a reference to Joel Schumacher's previous film, “St. Elmo's Fire” (1985), in which Rob Lowe starred.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
