One of the most striking scenes in The Lost Boys is that board full of missing people’s posters, most of them young and dressed in ways that people were primed to consider outsider-status or gay. Like now, those runaways were vulnerable to people taking advantage of them, their disappearances barely investigated or cared about. In the 80’s a large amount of young runaways were sadly young LGBTQIA+ people thrown out by their parents (it’s still a distressingly high proportion today). The opening scenes, The Lost Boys focuses on usually young, counter-culture runaways deliberately dressed and styled to indicate that either by choice or circumstance they have found themselves at odds with everyday America. That AIDs link is part of the queercoding of the film, but not the entirety of it. The resurgence of the vampire film in the 80’s and 90’s was definitely linked to AIDs – as always, horror films cover the fears and anxieties a community has. Vampirisim in the film is a blood-borne contagion, killing many, and spreading heavily among young runaways in the late 80’s. The Lost Boys (1987) | Warner Bros Picturesīefore I go into that in detail I can’t ignore the obvious nods to the AIDs epidemic.
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