“Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It’s fun to be a vampire.”
In 1987, The Lost Boys forever altered the idea of vampires in popular culture and inspired cult classic phenoms, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But in a lot of ways, though, The Lost Boys was a film that was made on the fly (no pun intended), with things changing almost daily as production went on, and a bunch of young actors cooped up together in a Santa Cruz hotel that some cast members compared to a constant rave. As a result, the film we got was almost very different more than once, as you’ll see in these anecdotes from behind-the-scenes of everyone’s favorite teen vampire movie.
The Initial Idea Was For A Kid-Friendly Film Focused On Peter Pan As A Vampire
Photo: Warner Bros.
“It was very much ‘Goonies Go Vampire,'” director Joel Schumacher said of the original script, penned by Jan Fischer and James Jeremias, a first-time screenwriter who had the idea after reading Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. Specifically, the character of Claudia, “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 favorite stories,” Jeremias later recalled, “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?'” In Jeremias and Fischer’s initial version of the story, which Schumacher called “charming and adorable, and very G-rated,” all the characters were pre-teens, from the vampires themselves to the protagonists to the vampire-hunting Frog brothers.
It was producer Richard Donner (then still attached as director) who had the idea of making the characters older. “He said, ‘Old enough to drive,'” Jeremias recalled, “but what he meant was, ‘Old enough to f*ck.'”
iefer Sutherland Angered The Director By Changing His Character’s Haircut
Photo: Warner Bros.
Inspired by singer Billy Idol, Kiefer Sutherland told the set hairdresser to snip off his long hair on the second day of filming, creating his character’s unmistakable look. “Joel Schumacher wanted me to have long hair,” the actor recalled, “and I had long hair at the time, and then he wanted it white, a timeless kind of thousand-year-old look. So I dyed it white, and my hair was like normally long, like long everywhere. And I just looked like a wrestler! I hated it.”
So the actor had it changed on the sly, which initially angered the director, though he eventually came around. “I actually think I might’ve been responsible, or at least partially responsible, for creating the mullet,” the actor says. “And for that, I’ll apologize to the death.”
They Got To Film In Santa Cruz Only If The Name Was Changed (To Santa Carla)
Photo: Warner Bros.
“This is exactly where you would go if you were a teenage vampire,” director Joel Schumacher said of the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, where much of the movie was filmed. Santa Cruz didn’t want to scare away any tourists, so filmmakers had to change the name of the town in the movie to Santa Carla. That infamous graffiti on the back of the “Welcome to Santa Carla” sign, though? That was true, at least according to Schumacher.
“Santa Cruz had more murders per capita than anywhere else in the United States,” the director recalled. “There was a murder outside of our hotel while we were preparing the movie.”
Joel Schumacher Lobbied Unsuccessfully To Get A ‘Lost Girls’ Sequel Made
Photo: Warner Bros.
The Lost Boys did well in theaters but was a huge hit on home video, prompting producer Richard Donner and Warner Bros. studios to look at the possibility of a sequel. Director Joel Schumacher, who had been the one to propose the idea of the vampires sleeping in a ruined hotel that had crumbled into the San Andreas Fault, initially suggested a prequel set during the earthquake of 1906. When that didn’t fly, he instead proposed a Lost Girls movie with “Drew Barrymore and Rosanna Arquette on motorcycles. I wanna see that movie!”
Sadly, neither version ever went before the cameras, and while The Lost Boys later got a pair of lackluster direct-to-video sequels, the Lost Girls idea was suitably lost to history.
The Film Originally Had A Post-Credits Scene In The Vampires’ Lair
Photo: Warner Bros.
The ending of The Lost Boys is already pretty memorable, with Grandpa’s memorable last line about what he never could stomach about Santa Carla, but apparently, the script originally also had a post-credits sequence that was never filmed. While post-credits sequences are de rigueur these days, they were a rarity back in the ’80s. In it, viewers would have been taken back into the subterranean hotel lair of the vampires, where we would see a mural from the early 1900s, depicting master vampire Max, surrounded by a group of young boys who, presumably, became the film’s eponymous Lost Boys.
This sequence would have tied in nicely with Joel Schumacher’s proposal for a prequel featuring the earthquake of 1906, which is what plunged the hotel into the San Andreas Fault in the first place.
Joel Schumacher Helped Keep A Young Corey Feldman Off Drugs – For A While
Photo: Warner Bros.
In a series of tweets commemorating the passing of director Joel Schumacher in June 2020, Corey Feldman revealed that the first time he was given coke by an adult was while he was filming The Lost Boys, but that it wasn’t Schumacher who did it and, indeed, when the director noticed Feldman was high on set, “he fired me on the spot.” The actor continued, “He then asked where my parents were! When I told him I didn’t know, he realized it wasn’t my fault! So he rehired me with a warning.”
According to Feldman, he didn’t do coke again until a year later. “Once I started down the wrong path,” the actor recalled, “Joel called me to his home. We met. He tried to prevent my descent.” Feldman continued, saying he and Schumacher had enjoyed a close relationship until the director’s passing.
Schumacher Got Bands Like INXS On The Soundtrack By Promising To Direct Music Videos For Them
Photo: Warner Bros.
When we remember The Lost Boys, it’s for the film’s unforgettable soundtrack as much as anything else. When director Joel Schumacher got behind the camera for the teen vampire flick, he was fresh off another coming-of-age film, 1985’s St. Elmo’s Fire, which also had a legendary soundtrack. In fact, according to Tim Cappello, who became famous as the shirtless “sax man” from the film, Schumacher was “really responsible for most of the music in The Lost Boys. You can listen to that album and you’re really listening to Joel’s taste in music.”
In order to put together a soundtrack featuring some ambitious gets, including Echo & the Bunnymen and two tracks by INXS, Schumacher promised to direct music videos for the band. For INXS, this became the video for “The Devil Inside.” Schumacher also later directed the video for Seal’s “Kiss from a Rose,” which appeared on the soundtrack of his 1995 film, Batman Forever.
The Scenes Of The Vampires Flying Were Lifted From ‘Top Gun’
Photo: Warner Bros.
While The Lost Boys became a modest success at the box office and a beloved cult hit in the following years, Warner Bros. wasn’t always enthusiastic about the film’s future during production. Joel Schumacher later commented the studio couldn’t understand what kind of film he was making. “When they asked if it was a horror or a comedy,” the director says he simply replied, “Yes.”
This led to the studio getting what Schumacher calls “cold feet,” reducing the budget by more than $2 million just before filming began. This meant the crew had to cut corners, often showcasing the scenes in which the vampires were flying more through suggestion than special effects, and even borrowing a POV flying scene by reusing footage from Top Gun, which had come out just the year before.
Costume Designers Created The Vampires’ Outfits To Reflect A Variety Of Eras
Photo: Warner Bros.
As the idea for The Lost Boys was evolving, Joel Schumacher decided they should look like “a British gypsy band,” while costume designer Susan Becker “dressed the vampires in a mélange of clothes from different eras, hinting at their agelessness.” Meanwhile, Kiefer Sutherland’s vampire leader ended up wearing black gloves because the actor had injured his wrist during filming.
Schumacher pointed out vampires have pretty much always been sexy. “Dracula dresses in dinner clothes. Quite elegant.” These new vampires, though, were going to be something few of their cinematic predecessors had been – young and sexy. The layered – and varied – look of their costumes helped to cement them as punk rock style icons as well as creatures of the night.