Joel Schumacher's 1987 vampire film The Lost Boys has gone on to become one of the more popular horror films of the eighties thanks to its enjoyable blend of scares, style and humor.

The film follows Michael (Jason Patric) and Sam (Corey Haim) Emerson who move to Santa Clara with their mother Lucy (Dianne Wiest) after she divorces their father. They all move in with Lucy's father (Barnard Hughes), a strange hippy with an interest in taxidermy. Santa Clara seems normal enough on the surface but Michael soon finds out that there's more going on here than meets the eye when he gets involved with a group of local teenagers. He falls for the female of the group, Star (Jami Gertz), but winds up on the bad side of their leader, David (Kiefer Sutherland) who convinces him to drink some blood at their hideout off the coast.

The next day, Michael's behavior becomes increasingly erratic. He's sleeping all day and out all night and he's prone to wearing sunglasses in the house. Sam meets a couple of kids dubbed the Frog Brothers (Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander) who work at the local comic book shop who tell him that his brother just might be a vampire. As Lucy heads out into the workforce and takes a job at the local video store working for the kindly Max (Edward Herrmann), Sam and the Frog Brothers try to figure out if Michael really is a vampire or not and if he is, what they can do about it.

If you saw this film at an impressionable age in the eighties then you know first hand that The Lost Boys made vampires cool again. By today's standards it isn't particularly scary or even all that suspenseful but it has style to spare and it still works really well as a horror-comedy. Joel Schumacher directs the film with class and he keeps things moving at a great pace ensuring that the film is never dull. We get just enough character development for the protagonists that we can easily overlook the fact that we get almost none for the antagonists. The dialogue is witty and clever, the film oozes with eighties era sex appeal, and the soundtrack is still fantastic.

From a critical standpoint, The Lost Boys is far from perfect but as a pop culture artifact or even phenomenon, it's an important film, especially when you take into consideration the cast members and what they'd go on to do (for better or worse). Corey Haim has never been better than he is in this film and his Sam is a completely believable and genuinely likeable kid who contrasts nicely with his angst ridden brother as played by Jason Patric. Kiefer Sutherland might be completely one dimensional but he's as cool as you can get as the heavy while Jami Gertz has a very sexy innocence about her that allows us to feel for her character and her character's plight. The humor, provided by the Frog Brothers and Lucy's relationship with Max, keeps the film fun and ensures that the darker material doesn't overshadow the entertainment factor.

The twist at the end of the film is a little predictable and, as mentioned, the vampires are nothing more than cool looking bad guys, they have no real personality, but it's hard not to get sucked into the colorful and slick world that Schumacher and company crafted with this picture. The effects, the set design, and the wardrobe all just gel perfectly and everything really comes together with this one making The Lost Boys a film very worthy of its cult classic status.

Video:

The Lost Boys arrives on Blu-ray in a 1080p AVC encoded 2.40.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that preserves the film's original theatrical aspect ratio and for a film that's now over two decades old, it looks pretty damn good. The source material was obviously in excellent shape as there's hardly any print damage or dirt on the picture to complain about. Color reproduction is excellent with the brighter colors really popping off of the screen at you. Detail is very strong throughout and three aren't any problems at all with mpeg compression artifacts or edge enhancement issues. This is a big step up from the standard definition release in terms of detail, clarity, colors, skin tones and, well, pretty much everything. The film looks great.