Rocking out with the Lost Boys

During my search for clips on last week's Bad Movie Month selection Sliver,I found that there were many folks who loved the soundtrack,despite the film's oversexed dreck of a plot(including one of my new regular readers of this goofy little blog). This got me to thinking about the movie soundtracks which I liked the best,regardless of how good or bad the film attached to the tunes was.



For this week's upcoming BMM feature,I had to endure the horror that is Lost Boys: The Tribe(full report to come on Friday)and to recover from such vampiric vileness,I treated myself to another reviewing of the original Lost Boys.

Lost Boys is pretty much considered a '80s camp fest by some,but the film does actually have some damn fine special effects and builds up quite a bit of suspense(the vampire attacks are not graphic until the latter half of the film and rather mild by the current R-rated standards).

Part of the movie's appeal is the music;say what you will about Joel Schumacher as a director but when he gets it right,he gets it right. He and the other behind the scenes people took full advantage of the MTV surge of music and visual style and used it to showcase the story and characters to the fullest.



For example,a key component of the plot has Santa Carla newcomer Michael(Jason Patric) being instantly bewitched by the mysterious beach girl Star(Jamie Gertz). That scene takes place during a live concert performance by Tim Capello(who also played the sax for Tina Turner during her What's Love Got To With It days-my mom thought he was quite a juicy piece of eye candy there).

The Capello song,"I Still Believe", is on the official soundtrack,in it's entirety,but no music video was created for it. That's just as well,since the song is perfectly aligned with that oh-so magic moment that Michael lives to regret:





A song that did get the MTV treatment and promotional video was "Lost in the Shadows" by Lou Gramm. The mix of film clips with the scenes of Lou Gramm amidst the gothed-up ragamuffins traveling to who-knows-where in the loosely slat boarded car of a train(or is it a truck? I can't tell for sure) is nicely eerie. Also,that little kid in the choir boy outfit is spooky as hell:





Echo and the Bunnymen did a cool cover of "People are Strange",which ties in to the film well(the Lost Boys' lair does have that Jim Morrison poster)and it's used early on in the movie as the Emerson family arrives in Santa Carla and gets a good long look at the new neighborhood:





INXS and Jimmy Barnes had a real toe tapper of a tune with "Good Times"(they also contributed a song called "Laying Down the Law") and it was featured in a couple of scenes,particularly during the big showdown with the vampires. This was the song that played as Sam(Corey Haim)managed to take one of the vamps out via "death by stereo.":





But the one song that is considered the Lost Boys' signature is "Cry Little Sister" by Gerard McMann. You could almost subtitle it"Michael's Theme",as it is played during many of his character's crucial moments.

CLS is the background music for Michael and Star's consummation of their love and is a beautifully haunting melody on it's own. A lame cover of the song is used for Lost Boys: The Tribe and is another good reason to avoid that sucker like the plague(the things I do for blog topics,I tell ya!).

Anyway,I was happy to find that I still had the Lost Boys soundtrack in my CD collection,so that I could rock out to these tunes whenever I wanted to and relive those movie moments in my mind with the right music. Unlike the Emerson's Grandpa,I never get sick of all those damn vampires: