FRESH BLOOD

THE LOST BOYS was an unholy production: an organic, ever-evolving beast held together by hard graft, extreme partying, some of the most beautiful young actors New Hollywood had to offer and an obscene amount of talent. This was not your dad’s Dracula — this was sexed-up vampires, maggot hallucinations and death by stereo, lensed by the cinematographer of Taxi Driver, brought to life by the director of hot young graduates drama St. Elmo’s Fire.

“Warner Bros. took a big chance with this movie, and with me, because they really didn’t know what the heck I was doing,” chuckles a now 80-year-old Joel Schumacher, by his fireplace at home in New York, The Lost Boys on the TV for reference. Well, it has been 33 years. In that time, though, adoration for it has only grown. And while the film wasn’t quite forged in the fires of hell, it was certainly bedevilled.

JAMES JEREMIAS WAS A FIRST- time screenwriter, working as a grip on studio lots when he had the idea for The Lost Boys. “I had read Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire,” he says, “and in that there was a 200-year-old vampire trapped in the body of a 12-year-old girl. Since Peter Pan had been one of my all-time favourite stories, I thought, ‘What if the reason Peter Pan came out at night and never grew up and could fly was because he was a vampire?’”

So was born ‘Lost Boys’, back then