The Lost Boys is a 1987 American teen horror film directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Jason Patric, Corey Haim, Kiefer Sutherland, Jami Gertz, Corey Feldman, Dianne Wiest, Edward Herrmann, Alex Winter, Jamison Newlander, and Barnard Hughes.
The film is about two Arizonan brothers who move to California and end up fighting a gang of teenage vampires. The title is a reference to the Lost Boys in J. M. Barrie's stories about Peter Pan and Neverland.
The film was followed by two sequels, Lost Boys: The Tribe and Lost Boys: The Thirst.
Michael Emerson (Jason Patric) and his younger brother, Sam (Corey Haim), move with their recently divorced mother, Lucy (Dianne Wiest), to Santa Carla, a fictional coastal California town (based on—and filmed in—Santa Cruz, CA) plagued by gang activity and unexplained disappearances. The family moves in with Lucy's father (Barnard Hughes), a cantankerous and eccentric old man who lives on the outskirts of town, and enjoys taxidermy as a hobby.
The center of town life is the Boardwalk, which is plastered with flyers of missing people. While Lucy gets a job at a local video store run by a conservative man named Max (Edward Herrmann), Michael becomes fascinated by Star (Jami Gertz), a beautiful young woman he spots at the Boardwalk one night, and who lives with David (Kiefer Sutherland), the mysterious leader of a local gang. Meanwhile, in the local comic book store, Sam meets brothers Edgar and Alan Frog (Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander), a pair of self-proclaimed vampire hunters, who warn him that Santa Carla is under attack from vampires, and give him horror comics to teach him about the threat (though Sam scoffs at their warning.)
Michael finally meets and talks with Star the next night, but also encounters David, who provokes Michael into a motorcycle race, which almost results in him being baited over the edge of a sea cliff. David then invites Michael to the gang's lair, a once-luxurious hotel sunken by an earthquake, where he is put through an unsettling initiation that includes drinking from an ornate wine bottle. Star tells Michael not to drink from the bottle, as it is actually full of blood, but Michael does not believe her, and takes a sip. He then joins the gang in hanging from the underside of elevated train tracks, watching in horror as each willingly drops into a foggy gorge below. Unable to hold his grip any longer, Michael falls... waking up in his bed, groggy and disoriented, the next morning.
While Lucy and Grandpa are both out of the house on dates, Michael's developing vampirism starts to become clear to Sam. When Michael's bloodlust momentarily takes over, he attempts to attack Sam in the bath, but is fought off by Sam's dog, Nanook. Sam then notices that Michael's reflection in the mirror is beginning to fade away. In a panic, Sam runs to his room and calls Lucy, who is on a date with Max, but the phone call is interupted when Michael suddenly develops the ability to fly, and appears outside Sam's window, frightening him. Despite Michael trying to tell Lucy that everything is alright, Sam's screams are enough to make her run out on her date with Max, and rush home. Michael, meanwhile, finally convinces Sam to trust him. His brother lets him in through the window, and they agree to work together to try and stop Michael's transformation (brushing off Lucy's concerns, and keeping the whole thing a secret from her.)
Sam goes to the Frog brothers for help, but refuses their suggestion to kill Michael. Instead, he turns to the comic books, and finds that Michael (having not yet killed anyone,) is only a half-vampire, and can be cured if the so-named 'Head Vampire' is killed. While pondering who the Head Vampire is, Sam witnesses Max's dog, Thorn, attack Lucy when she tries to go and apologise to Max for running out on their date. Remembering a mention in his comic books about the 'Hounds of Hell' (guardians employed to protect vampires while they sleep during the day,) and having a dislike for Max anyway, Sam convinces the Frog brothers that Max must be the Head Vampire. At a dinner party held by Lucy, the three of them put Max through a series of tests (including the use of garlic, holy water, and mirrors,) which all appear to indicate, however, that he is normal, greatly embarrassing Lucy. Meanwhile, Michael visits Star to question her about what is happening to him, and the two finally consummate their relationship.
Determined to tempt Michael in to making his first kill, David takes him one night to a bonfire where a group of Surf Nazis are gathered, and he and the rest of the gang enter a vicious feeding frenzy. Horrified by the sight, but knowing that he cannot hold off his vampire instincts for much longer, Michael returns home to Sam, who asks him who the Head Vampire is. Star then suddenly arrives, flying in through the window, and revealing that she too is a half-vampire. Michael realises that the wine he drank on his first night in the gang's lair was in fact David's blood. It emerges that David had intended for Michael to be Star's first kill, sealing her fate as a fully-fledged vampire. Star, however, says that she too wants to be cured.
The next day, a weakening Michael leads Sam and the Frog brothers to the gang's lair, where they intend to kill the vampires in their sleep. (The Frog brothers are stunned and terrified to discover that the vampires do not sleep in coffins, but hang from the ceiling like roosting bats.) The staking of one vampire (Marko) awakens David and the two others, and the boys barely escape with their lives, but manage to rescue Star and Laddie, a recently abducted half-vampire child.
That evening, while Lucy is on a date with Max, and Grandpa is out of the house, the teens arm themselves with weapons based on traditional defenses against vampires. David and the gang attack, and are each killed in a spectacular fashion. Michael faces off with David, and ultimately impales him on a pair of mounted deer antlers. However, Michael, Star and Laddie do not transform back to normal with David's death, as they had hoped. Lucy and Max then return home, and Max is revealed to be the Head Vampire after all. He informs the boys that to invite a vampire into one's house (as Michael sarcastically invited Max in for Lucy's dinner date,) renders one powerless, which explains why Sam and the Frog brothers' tests failed to work on him. Max's objective all along was to get Lucy to be a "mother" for his "lost boys". But his grand plan is thwarted when Grandpa suddenly crashes his jeep through the wall of the house, impaling Max on the wooden fence posts he is carrying in the back of the jeep, and causing him to explode in the fireplace. Michael, Star, and Laddie then return to normal.
The film ends with Grandpa calmly retrieving a drink from the fridge, seemingly oblivious to the carnage around him. He then declares, "One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach...all the damn vampires", revealing that he has in fact known about the vampires all along.