It may have opened in theaters 35 years ago by our calendars, but The Lost Boys is eternally youthful. That’s because new generations keep discovering Joel Schumacher’s 1987 vampire picture — newly available in a 4K UHD release from Warner Bros. — and drinking up its kooky blend of gonzo storytelling, goth fashion and barely-latent homoeroticism. (Who can forget that shirtless sax player?) And Lost Boys co-star, Alex Winter, confirms that those are the essential ingredients that contribute to the movie’s eternal success.
“We were all on the same page,” the actor tells Yahoo Entertainment when asked if the cast and crew were aware they were making a horror movie that openly flirted with LGBTQ themes. “Everyone was very aware of what Joel was doing and very supportive of it.” (Watch our video interview above.)
Having gotten his start in the acting business by treading the Broadway boards in the early ’80s, Winter remembers being exposed to New York City’s vibrant gay culture scene well before he showed up on The Lost Boys set to play vampire gang member Marko. “It wasn’t necessarily my world — I’m straight — but it was a lovely community, and they were the closest family I had,” he remembers. “And Joel had an enormous reputation preceding Lost Boys as a New York fashion icon. So it was not subtext. It was really evident what he was mashing up and how he was doing it, and to me it’s a beautiful part of the movie.”
Winter also notes that it’s only within recent years that the rest of pop culture has finally caught up to where The Lost Boys was nearly four decades ago. “Now we have RuPaul, and we have all these things where gender fluidity is more open. But there was gender fluidity in the ’80s … I had friends who were trans. Joel’s attitude was: ‘Let’s swing for the fences on with this movie.'” (Schumacher died in 2020, after a long career as one of Hollywood’s most prominent out gay directors.)
Speaking of swinging, head Lost Boy, Kiefer Sutherland, remembers spending lots of time doing just that, from a harness, while shooting the movie’s grand climax. In a Yahoo Entertainment interview for the release of the action thriller, The Contractor, earlier this year, the actor described that sequence taking two days, while his bloodsucking alter ego, David Powers, battled the movie’s almost-vampish hero, Michael Emerson (played by Sutherland’s real-life friend, Jason Patric).
“It was the most intense kind of stunt work that Jason and I had done,” Sutherland says, laughing. “We were in these harnesses, and if it looked like we collided at 40 miles an hour. It’s because we actually collided at 40 miles an hour! I was hung by four strings and he was hung by three, and as we would collide they would get tangled. And those strings were sharp! They were so thin… you could cut your hand off.”
The Lost Boys was filmed before CGI revolutionized cinematic special effects, but there is a bit of digital trickery that happens after David meets his end on the pointy side of a set of antlers. “For half of the shot going into the antlers, I had a beard,” says Sutherland. “And as I died, I went back to being a young boy before the vampires got me. My beard was gone and my hair started to change. It was the early days of those kinds of effects, and I remember thinking that it was going to look cool.”
Unfortunately, there were no digital assists when it came to David’s vampire appearance, which required Sutherland to wear oversized contact lenses that could have done some real damage. “They were actually very dangerous,” he says now. “We were only allowed to wear them for about five minutes, because they sucked out all the oxygen from your eyes and they would dry up. So they were awful, but you know [make-up artists] Ve Neill and Greg Cannom did that movie, and they went on to win Oscars. I was 18 at the time and didn’t know how lucky I was to be working with those artist. So I’m grateful in hindsight, but when I was 18, I was complaining a lot.”
Informed of Sutherland’s complaints, Winter immediately one-ups his former leader. “I love Kiefer to death, but he has no business talking about the contact lenses,” the Bill & Ted franchise star says with a laugh. Instead, Winter insists that his own death scene at the hands of Sam Emerson (Corey Haim) and the Frog Brothers, Edgar and Alan (Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander) was far more painful.
“I’m hanging upside down, and then Corey [Feldman] stabbed me with that really bad collapsible spike, which you can see as clear as daylight in the movie,” Winter remembers. “I hit the ground, and then Haim, Feldman and Jamison all start screaming and kicking dirt at a hundred miles an hour into my face with those giant-ass 1980s contact lenses there were basically like a ping-pong ball cut in half! They scratched my cornea and almost blinded me. It was EMT, ambulance, hospital — the whole nine yards. And here’s Kiefer whining about contact lenses. Give me a break!”
It may have taken 35 years, but the Frog Brothers are ready to fess up about which of them was the primary sand-kicker. (Haim died in 2010.) “Maybe it was me, and I feel bad if it was,” Newlander says. “If it was me, I’d feel terrible,” Feldman chimes in. “I don’t imagine doing anything like that on purpose!”
Feldman goes on to say that a “scuffle” between the three younger actors may have been at the root cause of Winter’s injury. “We were kind of mad at each other, not cognizant of the fact that Alex was hanging there with those damn contacts in his eyes. So he was having a rough day and of course we’re in our own world being selfish kids not thinking about the fact that there’s this poor guy hanging upside down for every take and that we should probably get through this as quickly as possible! So there were some missed avenues there. Apologies, Alex!”
Fortunately, no one got injured in the Frog Brothers’s other major scene — an extended dinner sequence where the duo and Sam try to expose kindly video store owner, Max (Edward Herrmann), as being the vampire coven’s sire. Those attempts include generous helpings of garlic and other tell-tale signs of vampirism.
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“I really love that scene,” Newlander says now. “And part of the reason why I love that scene — I’m gonna be honest — is because that next day Joel pulled me aside and he was like, ‘I just watched the dinner scene and you were so great in it.’ That scene also has one of my favorite moments in the movie where [Dianne Weist] says ‘Edgar Alan Frog?’ That took us 20 takes to get right! And then my voice cracked on one of the takes, and we all laughed.”
Meanwhile, Feldman says that sequence offered him the opportunity to make Edgar stand apart from his brother. “That was one of the first moments where I seriously thought about Edgar’s physicality and mannerisms,” he recalls. “I remember making this choice to do this thing with my fist, and keep it perched for the whole scene, like it meant I was in business or something. I don’t know where that came from, but I definitely remember that being a poignant moment.”
Both actors also share poignant memories of Schumacher from their time on The Lost Boys set. “He was very humble, very sweet and very parental with us,” Newlander says. “When we would walk in every day, he would be so excited to see us,” Feldman adds. “He would say, ‘I love my dudes!’ and then give us a big hug. Every day was a celebration, although he also had his moments where he’d get mad and frustrated.”
“The last time I saw Joel was in 2006 at a film festival in Spain,” Feldman continues. “It was really nice because we got to see each other as peers. I’ll also never forget the time when he invited me to his home to lecture me about the way I was dressing! He had some issues with the fact that I was wearing all black clothes. When we did the press junket for The Lost Boys, I was wearing black gloves, a black hat and black sunglasses. And he was like, ‘What’s up with this look you’ve got going on here?’ That was pretty funny since he ended up becoming the director of Batman!”
That just goes to show you — like The Lost Boys, all-black ensembles never go out of style.
— Video produced by Kyle Moss and edited by Jason Fitzpatrick
The Lost Boys is currently available on 4K UHD on Amazon, and is also available to rent or purchase on most VOD services.
