14 Things You Never Knew About Vampire Classic 'The Lost Boys'
It may have been 30 years since the release of "The Lost Boys" (on July 31, 1987), but the teenage vampires, like their "Peter Pan" namesakes, never grow old. The film remains popular to this day, and no wonder. Its influence is everywhere, from its then-novel blend of horror and comedy to its trope of vampires who are young and sexy (thus paving the way for everything from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" to "Twilight"). It also made stars out of Kiefer Sutherland, Jason Patric, Jami Gertz, and the twoCoreys.
As large as "Lost Boys" has loomed over the culture for the past three decades, there's a lot you may not know about it, from how radically different the original idea was from the final product, to who that shirtless, oily guy with the saxophone was. Here are all the Corey gory details.
1. Originally, the vampires were going to be a lot younger -- like pre-adolescent. "The Lost Boys" was going to be director Richard Donner's follow-up to his hit "The Goonies" and center on a "Goonies" like pack of bloodsucking fifth-graders. Donner ultimately decided to direct "Lethal Weapon" instead, but he remained the executive producer of "Lost Boys."
2. Fresh from "St. Elmo's Fire," Joel Schumacher landed the "Lost Boys" directing gig, but he took it only on the condition that the vampires be hormonal teenagers instead of young kids.
3. The movie was shot in the California seaside amusement park resort town of Santa Cruz. The locale was renamed "Santa Carla" for the film, which describes its setting as "the murder capital of the world."
4. Santa Cruz municipal authorities were skittish about the shoot, in part because Clint Eastwood had surprised them by filming a rape scene on their boardwalk in "Sudden Impact," and in part because several real-life serial killers had stalked Santa Cruz in the 1970s. Nonetheless, the filmmakers and the locals worked together without friction. It probably didn't hurt that the production hired thousands of locals as extras.
5. Many people know that Jason Patric, whose big career break was playing the bitten-and-smitten Michael in this film, is the son of the star of another horror classic, "The Exorcist's" Jason Miller. But did you know that Patric's half-brother, Joshua John Miller, starred in another 1987 vampire cult classic, Kathryn Bigelow's "Near Dark"?
6. Sutherland's David wears black gloves throughout most of the film. It wasn't just a cool look, but also a way of hiding his broken wrist, an injury Sutherland suffered when he was showboating on a motorbike during his down time.
7. One of the innovations of "The Lost Boys" was having its vampires look like normal people most of the time, only to see their faces contort monstrously when they feed and reveal themselves as vampires. Part of the effect was achieved via the use of eerie white-pupiled contact lenses.
8. The contacts were so painful, however, that the actors could wear them for only a few seconds at a time. When David nearly captures Corey Haim's Sam in the cave, only to be burnt by a beam of sunlight, Sutherland's lone tear of pain dripping down his cheek is real, prompted by those irritating lenses.
9. The bare-chested singer/saxophone player who performs a cover of The Call's "I Still Believe" was Timmy Cappello. The shirtless, oiled-muscle performing style was his real-life gimmick, but he was also a classically trained performer, one who'd played alongside Carly Simon, Peter Gabriel, and Tina Turner, with whom he toured for 15 years.
10. The movie cost a modest $8.5 million to make. It earned back a healthy $32.2 million in North America.
11. For years, Schumacher tried to get Warner Bros. to make a sequel called "The Lost Girls." "I said, 'Do gorgeous teenage biker chicks who are vampires. It'll be great,'" he recalled in 2007, "But they don't listen to me."
12. The chemistry shown by young vampire hunters Corey Haim and Corey Feldman led to the two becoming dual heartthrobs of the Tiger Beat set. They co-starred in several more movies together over the next few years, notably, "The Two Coreys" about their comeback attempts.
13. Feldman made two direct-to-video sequels, 2008's "The Lost Boys: The Tribe" and 2010's "The Lost Boys: The Thirst." Plans for a fourth installment fell through.
14. The CW was planning to turn the film into an anthology TV series this fall, though the project has been pushed back until next year. Reportedly, the first season will be about a pack of vampires in San Francisco during 1967's Summer of Love.