Santa Cruz celebrates ‘The Lost Boys’ 35th anniversary

Just ask Jordan Peele.

Peele pays homage to ‘The Lost Boys’

“The Lost Boys” was a major influence on Peele, this generation’s it horror director, who recently resurrected an icon of the Bay Area’s recent past in “Nope.”

Peele loved “The Lost Boys” so much, he insisted the opener of his 2019 genre-bending suspense “Us” be filmed at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk as an homage to “The Lost Boys.” And he did such a good job tapping into the quirky, freaky soul of Santa Cruz that a rumor even started that the film was scaring tourists away.

But, in mind-bending Peele fashion, he didn’t stop there. Instead, he really got meta with his tribute.

“Us” opens in 1986, the year “The Lost Boys” was filmed — showcasing a film crew at the boardwalk, which is, of course, meant to be “The Lost Boys” production.

“We shot in Santa Cruz and the first scene of our movie is there,” Peele told Uproxx. “It’s the same beach, it’s the same amusement park. And it’s even 1986.”

“There is a reference to ‘The Lost Boys’ shooting by the carousel,” he added. “They’re walking down the … boardwalk and the mother says, ‘You know they’re shooting a movie over there by the carousel.’”

“The boardwalk is a pivotal place, also another character in ‘The Lost Boys’ and ‘Us,'” Visit Santa Cruz County spokesperson and film commissioner Christina Glynn told SFGATE. “I think for even a casual fan of film, you come here and you recognize the boardwalk right away, but for die-hard ‘Lost Boys’ fans, we have a map for more off-the-beaten-path gems. You’d be surprised how many people come here to find as many places they can in person.”

‘The Lost Boys’ a flop in critics’ eyes

Even in his very lukewarm reception of “The Lost Boys,” Roger Ebert recognized that there could be something there with the concept of teenage vampires: “If you really stop to think about it, a bunch of vampire teenagers would be a terrible shame, a tragedy, a heartbreaking loss of innocence for them, let alone their victims,” Ebert wrote in his two-and-a-half-star review. “Am I silly to take them seriously? Maybe like that. The movie doesn’t.”

Ebert went on to praise the cast, which was headlined by Dianne Wiest, who was coming off an Oscar win in 1986 for Best Supporting Actress in “Hannah and Her Sisters.” Other notables included longtime stage and television actor Barnard Hughes as Wiest’s father and character actor Edward Herrmann as a local comic book store owner and Wiest’s love interest.

But it was the teens that did the heavy lifting, including the mischievous Coreys (Haim and Feldman), heartthrobs Jason Patric and Kiefer Sutherland as dueling good boy/bad boy vampire besties and Jami Gertz as the femme fatale.

“If there was anything they could get into, the little troublemakers, they did,” assistant director Bill Beasley previously told SFGATE of Haim and Feldman’s on-set antics. “They would find it and do it. They were a handful.”

Second assistant director Judith Bouley, who was also responsible for location scouting and casting extras, wrangled thousands of potential extras for “The Lost Boys,” many of whom, she noted, were Santa Cruz locals.

“I did it at the Holiday Inn in Santa Cruz, and we announced it in the Santa Cruz Sentinel,” she told SFGATE. More than 2,400 people showed up in her two days of casting, and 800 were eventually selected to fill out the boardwalk scenes.

In spite of the extra effort to keep the Santa Cruz shoot weird, critics of the era were not impressed. “There’s some good stuff in the movie including a cast that’s good right down the line and a willingness to have some fun with teenage culture,” Ebert wrote. “…But when everything is all over, there’s nothing to leave the theater with — no real horrors, no real dread, no real imagination — just technique at the service of formula.”

Sacramento Bee reviewer George Williams, who also gave the film two stars, wasn’t as kind, or forward-thinking in his appraisal: “The movie, directed by Joel Schumacher (‘St. Elmo’s Fire’ and ‘DC Cab’) and put together by the crew that created ‘The Goonies,’ including executive producer Richard Donner, is on to something very promising at the start,” he wrote. “But director Schumacher doesn’t trust these ideas … stretching his story into nonsensical alleyways. ‘The Lost Boys’ never recovers.”

Did Kiefer Sutherland stumble on to the mullet?

Despite the critical pans, “The Lost Boys” defied expectations and rallied to a stellar $5.2 million opening weekend. It debuted at No. 2, just behind Timothy Dalton’s James Bond film “The Living Daylights,” and recouped most of its $8.2 million budget en route to grossing $32.2 million.

The teen horror comedy also went on to become one of Warner Bros. best-selling home video releases of all time, spawning a cultural avalanche of teen vampire literature and film that is ubiquitous today, from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” to “Twilight .” Yet only a few decades ago, this was something brand new.

Another legacy of the film: It helped popularize the mullet.

“I thought Billy Idol was really cool and I thought he looked really cool and I still think he looks really cool,” Sutherland recently told GQ in a retrospective of his favorite roles. “His hair was all spiky and kind of punk up front — so I got that haircut but I left enough at the back … and I think kind of accidentally might have at least been part of the movement that created maybe one of the worst hairstyles of all time—the mullet.”

‘A mystical place… a perfect place for the mystical Santa Carla’

“The Lost Boys” turned Santa Cruz into a filming destination, and that tradition continues today, Glynn says.

“The film captured the zeitgeist of the late ’80s and touched on the counterculture flavor of Santa Cruz,” she says. “Some say Santa Cruz is a mystical place, and it is a perfect place for the mystical Santa Carla. ‘The Lost Boys’ was really ground zero. It really married a teen movie with the vampire genre and put us on the map as a location.”

Besides “Us,” recent big-budget features that have filmed in Santa Cruz include Sandra Bullock’s 2018 viral Netflix hit “Bird Box” and the 2018 expansion of the Transformers universe “Bumblebee.”

And if you see California coastline or towering redwoods in a commercial or a magazine ad — chances are it was shot in Santa Cruz as well.

“Our bread and butter is still photography and commercials,” Glynn says. “Highway 9 through the Santa Cruz mountains and Highway 1 north of town are the most popular. We work with two or three very prominent location scouts and we’re on their radar. You can be at the boardwalk or the beach and 15 minutes later in a redwood forest. It’s both economical and very dramatic landscapes.”

Santa Cruz is ‘forever linked’ with ‘The Lost Boys’

Though Hollywood’s spotlight continues to shine on Santa Cruz, nothing stands alone quite like “The Lost Boys” and the fandom it still conjures, Glynn admits.

And if you weren’t able to get to the boardwalk or Atlantis Fantasyworld comic book store or the old Pogonip Clubhouse this weekend to pay tribute, rest assured: Santa Cruz is still planning a big “The Lost Boys” anniversary celebration this Halloween weekend, with a free showing of the film on the beach in front of the Colonnade at the Boardwalk at 6:30 pm Saturday, Oct. 29

“Coming through the pandemic, the boardwalk has had to pare it down a little this summer,” Glynn says. “But we wouldn’t miss an anniversary for ‘The Lost Boys.’ We’re forever linked to this cult classic.”