I love vampire movies, I love camp, I love over-the-top villains, I love/hate 80s fashion. So, naturally, I love The Lost Boys. It's a perfect blend of all my favorite things, it's just silly enough to be a great time, and just dark enough for me to proudly say that it's a good movie, alright? Plus, you can get absolutely sloshed watching it with friends if you take a drink every time Kiefer Sutherland says "Michael". Plus, it's pretty homoerotic. What's not to love?
In a recent interview promoting the new 4K restoration of the film with screenwriter James Jeremias, he reiterated that the original script he and Janice Fischer wrote was more a boy's adventure than analogy for puberty. Like Tintin, but with blood and gore and sex. So, not Tintin. There wasn't a romantic lead at all, let alone sexual innuendo. Star, the sultry romantic lead and object of Michael's affection was meant to be a boy, platonically involved with Michael. And everyone was supposed to be young, prepubescent and chaste, presumably.
The frog brothers were meant to be chubby, eight-year old boy scouts. That's a completely different movie from the cult classic that we know and love! Presumably, this abrupt tone shift from boyish romp to tale of seduction is probably to blame for the possibly accidental homoerotic steaminess of the film, Michael.
It was brutal. We had designed the film to be a boy's adventure, set in a time before sex rears its head. But that's not what the studio wanted. Donner wanted the boys to be old enough to drive. What he meant was old enough to fuck. He also wanted Star – whom we'd written as a boy – to change sex and be the love interest. He was turning our story into a teenage vampire movie. Once we sold the script it was out of our hands.
Interview with James Jeremias via Ben Gilbert, The Guardian
Previously: Lost Boys jacket sold
