When You’re Strange
Oct 10th, 2008 | By The Tuscaloosa Strangler | Category: Recent Cinema, Reviews
The Lost Boys is one of those movies that plays better in memory than in fact. I remember it being a dangerous, not-your-parents vampire movie, with cool music and even more cool vampires. Even though I was hardly a kid when I saw it — it was released in 1987 — it seemed at the time to be innovative and fresh, and maybe it was, but it hasn’t aged well.
The two Coreys
Part of the reason may be meta: it stars the notorious two Coreys: Feldman and Haim. In fact, it was the first time they’d worked together; they became a semi-famous pair, starring in several more successful movies together, before both of them got in trouble over drugs. In 2006 they began a reality show, The Two Coreys, in which their dysfunctional relationship is exploited for your viewing pleasure.
It’s hard to watch The Lost Boys without flashing on all that, but that’s not its only problem: The bigger problem is that it’s irreducibly a product of its time, complete with big hair and arena rock, and it simply doesn’t age well.
Clearly, The Lost Boys is meant to make a statement to and about teens: it opens and closes with a cover of the Doors’ “People are Strange,” and just to drive it all home, a picture of Jim Morrison adorns the lair of the teenage vampires. Teenagers it says are outsiders, marginals, strange. (Can you say alienation? I knew you could.)
Sutherland chews the undead scenery
One of the bright spots in my recent viewing is that I was reminded how beautiful Diane Wiest was in her prime (she stars as Feldman’s character’s mom) and how much I miss Bernard Hughes, who was at the height of his curmudgeonly powers. But best of all, it has an intense, charismatic performance by Kiefer Sutherland, who at just nineteen pretty-much blew everybody else away.
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I wrote a post not too long ago about how some films are better left remembered. This might fit into that category.
I still remember it well, so I don’t dare go and revisit it.
I remember a part early on where Jason Patrick gets an earring as part of his new rebellion and Haim gives him shit for it, even though he is wearing an earring? I never really understood that and it has stuck with me to this day for some strange reason.
And I am or at least was a sucker for the Coreys. They are a horrible product of my youth and just like their drug habits, I can’t seem to shake them.
I think you’re right, Evil … there are some that live in our memories and shouldn’t be touched.
Although, as I said, I thought Sutherland was fantastic.
And I was probably too old to be hooked on the Coreys, myself.