Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys is a horror film about two brothers who move to California and find themselves up against a gang of vampires. The Lost Boys can be considered a subversive film with homosexual subtext, primarily demonstrated by the young vampires of Santa Carla. Harry Benshoff’s “The monster and the homosexual,” lays out four ways that homosexuality intersects with the horror film: if it includes gay characters, was made by a homosexual director/writer/producer, has homosexual subtext, or is interpreted by a homosexual audience.
An “active queer reading practice,” as explained by Benshoff, involves a text signifying something specific and unique to a queer audience. This results from “the recognition and articulation of the complex range of queerness” which circulates around the image of the monster. In The Lost Boys, the monsters are the vampires, a group of social outsiders who are marginalized even in the eccentric town of Santa Carla, California. A homosexual spectator might recognize or align with the vampires who are ostracized and sit on the fringes of society. The gang, led by the character of David, only come out at night, which is also symbolic of the historical way gay people have been forced to hide their identity. In the scene where the vampires wait in a tree before attacking a group of people around a fire, we see the way they are forced to watch “normal society” from afar. Michael only knows the truth about the gang when he himself starts to transform into one.
The “lost boys” (source: telegraph.co.uk).
David and the other vampires get Michael to go with them to their lair by exploiting his interest in Star. Once there, David has Michael drink liquid out of a bottle, which he later realizes was David’s blood. This act can be seen symbolically as an intimate encounter, because it is the catalyst for Michael slowly turning into a vampire/homosexual. Hanging off the railroad bridge, the vampires tell Michael “You’re one of us,” which Michael seems determined to resist. Michael’s reluctance to join the gang and become one of them, and his brother Sam’s horror at finding out Michael is half-vampire, simulate the experience of sexual discovery and grappling with the idea of being gay in society.
David’s death scene (source: youtube.com).
At the end, Michael “rejects” his changing sexuality and decides to reverse the effects of his vampirism by killing David. This process begins with him having sex with Star, reaffirming his heterosexuality. In the final fight scene, Michael pushes David onto a set of antlers, impaling him in a symbolically phallic fashion. While The Lost Boys makes the vampires, and therefore the homosexual, the threat of the film, the queer spectator may still see their experience in the image of the marginalized monster.
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