(Music)
(Sound) In just a few days The Lost Boys will celebrate its 30th anniversary, and
once we discovered this, we got all up in our 80s nostalgia feelings and
did a deep dive on the movie's production history.
Let's go back to 1987 when vampires weren't whinny glittering pretty
boys with red eyes, and instead they had earrings and
mullets, rode motorcycles, on sand, like men.
Or I guess like boys, more accurately.
Here are seven things you didn't know about The Lost Boys, probably.
We may as well start with a thing about what is quite possibly the most 80s moment
in a very 80s movie overall.
The beach concert with this saxophone singer dude.
Zack's man in question was actually Tim Cappello,
who was Tina Turner's saxophone player at the time.
I've literally never thought about what Tina Turner's sax player would look like
before, but this, this is definitely it.
Between takes, Cappello would do push ups and bar bell lifts so
he would look extra swollen on screen.
And hey, it worked for the guys on Predator.
And if you missed that episode of the show, make sure you go check it out later.
Finish watching this first because we've got more things.
- (Noise) Notice anything unusual about Santa Carla yet?
- No, it's a pretty cool place, if you're a martian.
- Or a vampire.
- The boardwalk was a pivotal location throughout the film and not just for
the greasy saxophone player.
Though they shot on location at the Santa Cruz boardwalk,
they had to change the name of the town to Santa Carla in the film or else they never
would have been granted permission to shoot there and use the boardwalk at all.
Santa Cruz didn't wanna be associated with teenage violence,
let alone being called the murder capital.
They were trying to attract families and
any idiot can realize that's not great for business.
And so, the fictitious Santa Carla was born.
(Music)
- You been eating pizza?
- No, why?
- Phew, you smell like garlic.
- The Lost Boys wouldn't have been anything
close to what it is if it weren't for Joel Schumacher's input.
Because it was almost a completely different movie.
Originally it was gonna be much more G rated and
would have centered on eight year olds rather than teenagers.
Eight year olds, dude.
See Richard Donner was gonna direct and
it was gonna be more of a kid's adventure film spinning off of the idea that
Peter Pan was a vampire and that was why he stayed a boy forever.
The title The Lost Boys is an obvious hint at the original plan for the story.
The Frog brothers were also going to be vampires and
Star was actually another young boy vampire.
But Donner dropped out as director so that he could direct Lethal Weapon.
He stayed on as a producer and
got Joel Schumacher on board at his wife's suggestion.
Schumacher wasn't a fan of the family friendly vampire story and
decided to revamp.
- What was that?
A little vampire humor - Sorry,
the entire thing to make it into what we know now.
Considering Batman and Robin is what you get when you ask Joel Schumacher to
direct a kids movie, it's really a good thing they let him do
whatever the hell he wanted on The Lost Boys.
(Sound) - What was that?
- What was what?
- I thought I heard something.
- Forget it.
(Noise) - The POV aerial shots of the vampires
flying is a recurring motif throughout The Lost Boys.
But you may not have known that this began as a way to solve a problem
more than it was an actual aesthetic choice.
It's the age old story of having a production that was strapped for cash.
They didn't have money to do a lot of visual effects, so they came up with
a creative way to show the vampires flying without showing them flying.
They saved the money shots, and by that I mean the expensive shots where we actually
see them fly, for the end of the film.
(Music)
- My turn.
(Sound) - For the earlier scenes, they realized
that what you can't see is often more frightening than what you can see and
just built off of that to create the aerial shots.
Well played, Lost Boys cast and crew.
You get a star.
(Music)
- How are those maggots?
- Let's talk maggots,
because it turns out they don't do (Sound) if you just leave them be.
To get them to wiggle around inside of the Chinese food box the maggot wrangler,
yes you heard me, the maggot wrangler is an actual job.
Anyway, the maggot wrangler squoze, yes you heard me,
squoze is the past tense of squeeze.
The maggot wrangler squoze lemon juice on them to get them to finally move around
for the shot.
So the next time you need to get some lazy ass maggots to stop phoning it in and
finally moving there asses you can thank me.
Moving on.
(Sound) - You're a vampire, Michael.
My own brother a goddamn (Sound) bloodsucking vampire.
Boy, you wait till mom finds out, buddy.
- Crazy vampire eyes are pretty easy to achieve these days.
You can do it in post or just get some crazy contacts from Hot Topic or
wherever the youngsters are shopping these days.
But this was back in the 80s, so
the makeup department's options were a lot more limited.
The contacts they used were actually made of glass because soft contacts
hadn't been invented yet.
The contacts had to be large enough to fit the edges under your eyelids so
they'd stay in place and did I mention they were (Sound) glass.
That's means zero oxygen get into your eyes causing them to dry out at
a rapid pace.
It goes without saying that they were extremely uncomfortable and
it really hurt to have to wear them.
In this scene where the vampires are hanging like bats,
they could only shoot for four or
five minutes at a time before they'd have to lower the boys down for a break.
The painful contacts, plus dry eyes, plus having to hang upside down was just
too much to deal with for any longer than that.
- Good night blood sucker.
- No.
- And in this shot,
when David sheds his super dramatic single tear, that wasn't really Kiefer Sutherland
giving an amazing performance after his character's hand was on fire.
His real eyes were on fire from the contacts, so the tear was totally real and
happened naturally.
It was pure luck that it worked well for the scene, so they kept it.
(Sound) - Gross.
- There have been a few Lost Boys straight to video sequels that
don't hold a candle to the original.
But most people don't know that Joe Shoemaker wanted to produce a Lost Boys
sequel of his own.
It would have been about motorcycle gang of teenage girl vampires with
the imaginative title, The Lost Girls.
Schumacher was trying to make this happen well before 2008's
The Lost Boys: The Tribe, let alone 2010's The Thirst.
Reportedly he was pretty salty that Warner Bros went ahead with their sequels
instead of his Lost Girls idea, guess it was a lost cause.
Ha, okay, this episode definitely needs to end now.
That's it for this one, but hit the thumbs-up if you'd like us to do a part
two with more things about The Lost Boys in a future episode.
Thanks for watching, and subscribe to CineFix for
more true-ish things about movies and sometimes breezy saxophone players,
right here on Things You Didn't Know.
(Music)
- Hey, looks like I wasn't the only one got lucky last night?