When You’re Strange: “The Lost Boys”

I recently spent five days in Santa Cruz, California, visiting members of my extended family. Though I thoroughly enjoyed the classic boardwalk and the nearby redwoods, I didn’t spot a single vampire. And now I’m just a wee bit disappointed. Perhaps I should explain: last night I watched a cult classic shot largely in Santa Cruz, though in the film the town goes by the name of Santa Carla. The Lost Boys, directed by Joel Schumacher in 1987, is a horror film of a rather whimsical sort. It posits that each evening the venerable beachside fun zone is overrun with scruffy young biker types who sleep all day, hanging upside down from the ceiling of a convenient seaside cave, and choose to drink something that looks an awful lot like blood.

 Schumacher’s contribution to vampire lore is a fascinating one. I believe he and his writers fudged, just a bit, the classic rules of vampire evolution: I haven’t run into other vampire stories in which you can remain in a half-vampire state until your first kill, with the possibility that you can return straightaway to being fully human if the head of the pack is somehow bumped off. This is part of the optimistic streak that makes The Lost Boys actually endearing. The project began with a smart writer cogitating on the gang of “lost boys” surrounding J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. Living in the wild without conventional families, these youngsters formed themselves into a tribe that was ready for anything. And they proved to be desperate to find themselves a mother.

 All of this subtly finds its way into a contemporary story that takes advantage of Santa Cruz’s reputation for a laid-back post-Sixties vibe. Set against the creepy biker guys, led by a spiky-haired young Kiefer Sutherland, is a wholesome family group. Mom Dianne Wiest, trying to recover from a painful divorce, has brought her two sons to live with their curmudgeonly grandfather (Barnard Hughes, who has one of the film’s funniest lines). Hunky Michael (Jason Patric) is clearly restless, looking for a way out of the tight-knit family unit. When a gorgeous young hippie-type in a filmy outfit (Jamie Gertz) wafts by on the boardwalk, he’s a goner. Younger brother Sam (Corey Haim) loves his brother and his dog, and just wants to live out the summer at Grandpa’s in a comfortable way. He doesn’t know what he’s in for when two intense young comic-book mavens named Edgar and Alan Frog (the indispensable Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander) decide to educate him about vampire lore. Suddenly, when he sees his big brother start to wear dark glasses indoors, Sam realizes there’s a problem afoot. Set against all of this is Wiest’s amiable Lucy, trying to keep her family in line while pursuing an oft-thwarted romance with a buttoned-down boardwalk shopkeeper played by Edward Herrmann.

 Schumacher himself has credited the film’s long-term success to the casting of brilliant young actors who were just starting their careers. Though Kiefer Sutherland had already shot Stand by Me, it had not yet been released when he went before the cameras in The Lost Boys. Jason Patric had previously made only one film, something called Solarbabies, before The Lost Boys turned him into a heartthrob. Teenagers Corey Haim and Corey Feldman became household names because of this movie, as well as best friends. They later appeared together several times on screen; an A&E reality series titled The Two Coreys (2007-2008) sadly chronicles how their lives went downhill over the years. (Haim died at age 38.) Fame, it seems, is even more dangerous than vampires.

 

 

 

Of Defenestration and Other Deaths: Steve Bing and Joel Schumacher

Movie fans who love a mystery will be salivating over the demise of zillionaire film producer Steve Bing, who was found dead Monday at the base of the Century City residential tower where he had a luxury apartment on the 27^th floor. The strong indication is that he leaped to his death. I slightly knew his mother Helen, a gracious lady who was a leading L.A. philanthropist. The fifty-five-year-old Bing was a do-gooder in his own right, pledging funds to charitable causes and giving major support to the Democratic Party. He also had a serious connection to Hollywood. His reported $80 million investment made possible the screen version of The Polar Express, which went on to earn $285 million globally. He was behind the Rolling Stones concert film Shine a Light, directed by Martin Scorsese, as well as a Jerry Lee Lewis album, Last Man Standing.

Nor was Steve Bing just valued for his money. He wrote several films and TV episodes, and directed one, Every Breath. Among his 18 producer credits was a popular action flick, Get Carter. Though he kept a low profile, he made headlines when he was revealed to be the father of the son born in 2002 to British glamor-girl Elizabeth Hurley. Now a man who seemed to have everything, and lots of it, is gone. Suicide, apparently. But why?

There’s no mystery about the death that same day of 80-year-old Joel Schumacher, who succumbed to cancer in New York City. I wasn’t aware until recently that Schumacher started out as a costume designer, beginning with 1972’s adaptation of Joan Didion’s Hollywood novel, Play It As It Lays. He costumed six films in all, including Woody Allen’s futuristic romp, Sleeper. He then transitioned into screenwriting, getting his name on such popular entertainments as Car Wash and The Wiz, before making the leap into directing with The Incredible Shrinking Woman in 1981.For the Brat Pack hit St. Elmo’s Fire, he both wrote and directed. Of his early directorial efforts,  I’m partial to the spooky charms of The Lost Boys, the teen vampire saga set in picturesque Santa Cruz.

Once Schumacher’s directorial career got rolling, he proved a master at bringing to the screen the tense legal dramas of John Grisham, including The Client and A Time to Kill. He won the hearts of fans with thrillers of all kind (Phone Booth, starring Colin Farrell, is a prime example), and is known for his colorful contributions to the Batman screen franchise.  (Yes, he’s the genius behind casting George Clooney in Batman & Robin  and adding nipples to the Bat Suit.)

Despite his mass appeal, top critical honors eluded him, though that didn’t stop him from trying. In 2004, he directed a splashy cinematic version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stage musical, The Phantom of the Opera. (Its three Oscar nominations were all in technical categories.)

But I want to end here with a nod to one of his earliest films, The Last of Sheila. In 1973 Schumacher designed the costumes for this twisty whodunit. It was written by none other than Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins, both great lovers of puzzles and word games. The story features beautiful Hollywood folk (Richard Benjamin, Dyan Cannon, Raquel Welch among them) cruising the Mediterranean aboard a luxury yacht, all of them somehow connected to a gossip columnist who’d died a year earlier in a hit-and-run attack. Through an elaborate game proposed by host James Coburn, secrets are revealed and it’s clear that nothing is what it seems. Which is why I can’t stop wondering about the fate of poor Steve Bing.