Regularly watching Dark Shadows starting at age six gave me a weird interest in vampires at an early age. When I was eleven, my parents, surprisingly, let me watch The Lost Boys and it was immediately my new favorite movie (which lasted about two years, until Tim Burton’s Batman came out. I still like that movie, so shut up!). Watching The Lost Boys again this week made me realize something: clothes and hair in 1987 were horrible.
The Lost Boys started out with some promising names: Kiefer Sutherland starring, Richard Donner producing. . . then Joel Shumacher’s name appeared. The man with a penchant for tight pants sax solos, the man who put nipples on the Batsuit is never a really a good sign.
Kiefer and his vampire gang have mullets and feather earrings and dirt bikes. I think they were supposed to look threatening and bad ass, but the effect was more rock bottom hair band than thug. You might find these vampires slightly terrifying if you’re afraid of Poison or Warrant.
What’s slightly terrifying is that Warrant is still touring and still wearing leather pants. Look out Des Moines. They’re coming to a water park near you.
Of course, there is the tight pants sax solo on the beach that was suspiciously similar to Rob Lowe’s tight pants sax solo in St. Elmo’s Fire, but here its performed by an oily shirtless guy with even tighter pants. We’re talking painted on pants, a studded belt and so much oil that OPEC should have been making deals over his chest.
And the song sucked, too.
But, it’s all about the vampires! We don’t even see any vampire action until almost half way through the movie when Keifer’s hair band attacks some guys at a bonfire in the woods. That’s when Kiefer makes his little vampire speech: “Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It’s fun to be a vampire.”
Dude, you live in a cave.
Now that I think of it, Kiefer is the only member of the vampire hair band who spoke. The other guys whooped and hollered to illustrate just how fun it is to be a vampire and didn’t say anything else.
The Lost Boys wasn’t nearly as good as I remembered it being, but after years of tragic goth vampires like in Interview with the Vampire, Queen of the Damned and Underworld, it was refreshing to see vampires screaming “WOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!” and tearing it up on their dirt bikes, mullets streaming in the wind behind them.
At the very least, it could be used as an educational program on the hair and fashion of 1987. I don’t remember the last time I saw shoulder pads that big.
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Lisa Fary's earliest influences are Princess Leia, Rainbow Bright, Astronaut Barbie, and her 6th grade teacher, Ms. Palmer. She's angry that it's 2011 and she still doesn't have a hovercraft, but will accept a jetpack as consolation. That jetpack had better be pink with a rhinestone monogram. 
