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  Directed by
  Starring
  Specs
  • Widescreen 2.35:1
  • 16:9 Enhanced
  • Dual Layer ( )
  Languages
  • English: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
  • French: Dolby Digital Surround
  • Italian: Dolby Digital Surround
  Subtitles
    English, French, Italian, Dutch, Arabic, English - Hearing Impaired, Italian - Hearing Impaired, Bulgarian
  Extras
  • Deleted scenes
  • Theatrical trailer
  • Audio commentary
  • Featurette
  • Music video - Lost in the Shadows
  • Interviews
  • Multiple angle
  • Video commentary

The Lost Boys: Special Edition

Warner Bros./Warner Bros. . R4 . COLOR . 93 mins . M15+ . PAL

  Feature
Contract

The Lost Boys is one of those movies that sub-conciously brand you to a particular era of your life. Anytime it crops up, the pain of the branding is triggered, even if the mark left behind fits into the "I'm cool for being there" status. Actually, anyone who brags about living through the 80's is definitely not cool. Just look at The Wedding Singer as an example of what we are trying to forget. Movies like The Lost Boys immediately struck themselves into your psyche. The branding remains there with you throughout your adult life, eventually becoming a movie you tend to watch when there's no other choices left. A faithful standby? Or a self-indulgent mental trip back into the 80's. As much as we try to leave, we always head back there, secretly enjoying the satisfaction of the moment.

There are other movies in this category, The Breakfast Club immediately springs to mind. Maybe it’s just me but judging by the popularity of The Lost Boys, I’m definitely not alone here. I'm sure I'm not alone. Positive even. Then again, maybe it is just me.

"Maggots, Michael. You're eating maggots. How do they taste?"

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24 hours seems a long time away.

At this point, there's most likely two categories of people out there: Those who grew up with The Lost Boys and those who didn't. For those who didn't, and for those who still haven't seen it, the premise is not new, but in its time, it could be considered grounbreaking for taking the genre in a different direction to what we expected. Well, it's groundbreaking in that it's like a John Hughes movie with vampires; "Pretty in Blood" anyone?

Shamelessly borrowing from the previous review of The Lost Boys, Sam (Corey Haim), Michael (Jason Patric) and their mother Lucy (Dianne Wiest), have moved to peaceful town of Santa Carla. Michael inadvertantly becomes embroiled with the local gang of vampires, and Sam befriends the frog brothers, a couple of know-it-all vampire killers.

From there, it's a battle for Michael to resist the temptation to become a vampire and at the same time deal with the usual shennanigans of teenagism, whilst Sam and Co devise plans to kill the vampires and save his brother. You see, not your usual Vampyros fare. And because of this change from the norm, countless new revisions of the vampire tale have emerged since this classic. Groundbreaking indeed?!

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Beaver Las Vegas

Plot and gore aside, the true horror of The Lost Boys is the 80’s hair, the 80’s clothes, the 80’s child actors, the 80’s music, the 80’s greased up sax player. Oh the horror! Luckily these horrific elements have not been immortalised and they're some two decades long gone now. This Special Edition is both an archive of a great movie as well as file footage for another episode of "Where are they now?", for actors, clothing and hair-styles alike.

  Video
Contract

The original theatrical release of The Lost Boys was in the most common panavision 2.35:1 ratio as is this DVD release.

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Special Fried Lice?

After a quick run through of my original region 4 version of The Lost Boys it is apparent that some time and skill has been put into this new transfer. While the original release was marred by numerous film flecks and specs, grain and other video problems, this version is light years ahead.

Overall the picture is sharper and clearer, colours are as vibrant as you could expect in a vampire movie filmed mostly at night and shadow detail is excellent, even in the darkest scenes the lighting is preserved to allow the on screen action to be fully seen.

Despite the accolades this transfer still has a few minor problems, face close-ups can appear a little soft at times and the film dirt and flecks haven’t been completely eliminated but they are minor and hardly noticeable.

Overall this is an excellent transfer of a film approaching it’s 20th anniversary.

  Audio
Contract

The audio component of this DVD is available in English 5.1, Italian 2.0 and French 2.0.

Considering that the original theatrical track was only a 2.0 Dolby mix the remix into 5.1 channels has been well done. The channel separation for dialog and environmental effects is particularly noticeable while the fantastic 80’s music soundtrack (as well as some not-so-80’s) blares from all directions without drowning out the rest of the audio. The sub woofer also gets a decent work out mostly during music-heavy and action scenes.

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She nailed this scene.

In comparison the French and Italian tracks are dull and lifeless which makes you really appreciate the effort put into the English 5.1 mix.

It would seem that the audio has also received some reworking since the initial release of The Lost Boys on DVD because I certainly wouldn't describe this mix as "mediocre" as mentioned in the original review.

  Extras
Contract

This two disc set really lives up to the Special Edition title. Disc one contains the movie and a commentary by Director Joel Schumacher while the second disc is chock full of more commentaries, featurettes and other goodies so read on.

Full Length commentary by Joel Schumacher
As commentaries go this one is well above average. Schumacher provides information on the usual casting, locations, budget and cinematography but shows his love for the project by remembering a lot of extra little details about maggots wranglers and other unconventional elements. Unusual for a director’s commentary but Schumacher also knows when to shut up and let the scene play out rather than mindless blathering over it. Absolutely well worth a listen.

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Vampires in Tuskany.
The Lost Boys: A Retrospective
Running at 23 minutes this is more than just another ‘making of’ featurette, the name gives away the fact that it was filmed recently, as does Corey Haim’s girth. Featuring monologue interviews with Director Schumacher, Producer Richard Donner and actors Haim, Feldman, Sutherland and Newlander. If you listen to the commentary before watching this retrospective you will notice a lot of repeated information but it’s still an interesting watch.

Inside the vampires cave
This section runs for about 20 minutes and consists of 4 sub sections, A Directors Vision, Comedy vs Horror, Fresh Blood, A Lost Boys Sequel? covering topics mainly to do with the initial ideas behind the film. Particularly notable is the mention of a possible sequel, or even The Lost Girls a project that may have been proposed but never got off the ground, for shame!

Vamping Out: The undead creations of Greg Cannom
Greg Cannom was responsible for “Special Makeup Effects” which essentially means “turning people into vampires”. Running for 14 yawn inducing minutes too long this featurette deals with the decisions made in producing the vampire makeup in the movie, not my bag but someone will find it interesting.

Haimster and Feldog: The story of 2 Corey’s
Time has been unkind to Corey Haim, looking like he has been dragged from out under a dumpster he slurs and stutters as he disuses meeting Feldman for the first time and their subsequent “The Corey’s” career after The Lost Boys. Feldman on the other hand has fared considerably better, alert and witty and looking like a career in B movies has served him well.

Multi-Angle commentary with Haim, Feldman and Newlander
An interesting concept which uses the multi-angle feature of the DVD to give us three separate commentaries by the main child stars Haim, Feldman and Newlander. Running at nearly 20 minutes we see various scenes from the movie in a split screen with the actor. I’m going to have to say that Haim comes off boring and perhaps a little stoned, his commentary is full of inaccuracies and he clearly wasn’t interested at all. While Feldman’s poor attempts at jokes are pathetic at least he’s trying and Newland is interesting if a little dry, but at least he’s not stoned and disinterested. If nothing else it’s good to see the boys as they are today, nearly 20 years later.

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Electric 80s music went too far.

The Lost Scenes
This section features over 15 minutes of deleted scenes of varying video and audio quality. Some are just re-shoots of scenes that made the movie with slight difference others are completely new scenes worthy of being added to a future Directors Cut.

Video Clip: Lost in the Shadows by Lou Gram
Pull on your legwarmers and let you mullet grow back, the Lost Boys theme complete with video. You will probably only want to watch this once, but it’s worth it! I would have liked to see some of the other video clips of music from the movie, particularly the INXS & Barnes “Good Times”, among others.

Theatrical Trailer
Just how it sounds, the theatrical trailer featuring cheesy 80’s voice over and shots from the movie, of course.

Honestly, while there are a lot of extras here the only one really worth your time is the commentary by Schumacher, the rest are just fluff but fans of the movie will surely find the time to sit through them and gain some enjoyment despite this, I sure did.

  Overall  
Contract

Kiefer may be the only actor in this movie who made it out of the 80’s in one piece but The Lost Boys is still a brilliant piece of moviemaking and an icon of the 80’s that has finally received the (almost) full DVD treatment.


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      And I quote...
    "The Lost Boys is still a brilliant piece of moviemaking and an icon of the 80’s."
    - Chris Hore
      Review Equipment
    • DVD Player:
          Pioneer DV-676A
    • Projector:
          BenQ PB6100
    • Receiver:
          Yamaha RX-V995
    • Speakers:
          Wharfedale Diamond
    • Centre Speaker:
          Wharfedale Modus
    • Surrounds:
          Wharfedale Diamond
    • Audio Cables:
          Standard Optical
    • Video Cables:
          VGA connector
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