Coincidentally, as Lost Boys: The Tribe hit the top of my horror pile for a rewatch, we today lost 80s icon Corey Haim—well, half an icon, considering he really wasn’t whole unless he was in a movie with Corey Feldman. So, I popped in my Blu-Ray of the sequel, not expecting to be blown away, since I barely remember the film from the first time around.
But on my second viewing, I paid attention instead of doing five million other things while ‘watching’ it, as I did the first time. Sure, the film feels like vampires invading the 90210 remake at first, but if you stick with it, there are some very campy and funny lines sprinkled throughout, even if they are too sporadic for the film to fully reach its camp potential. This is also definitely not a sterile flick, because, despite the pretty faces and polished production value there is some great gore and impressive nudity.
The story is simple. A young guy and his sister move to a seaside community after losing their parents. All it takes is one party (complete with face-sucking lesbians) for them to get involved with the latest tribe of motorcycle gang vampires. Along comes “Eddy Frog” to warn them of the vampire threat, Eddy being none other than Corey Feldman. Your knee-jerk reaction will be to laugh out loud at how cheesy he sounds when he delivers his first lines in a froggy voice, but once his role gets off the ground (and if you can flash back to his character in the original film), it’s kind of endearing and nostalgic. One character even makes a reference to the great film The Goonies, a not-so ‘in’ joke for all us Gen-Xers who know that Corey Feldman was in that movie. Another nice throwback is the use of a pretty good rerecorded version of the awesome theme song from the original Lost Boys, called “Cry Little Sister,” a dark and atmospheric song that has the children’s chorus singing “Thou shall not fall.”
There are also a couple of awesome cameos. First, horror effects master Tom Savini has a nice gory cameo in the opening scene. And then, of course, the late Corey Haim makes his appearance in a short scene after the credits begin to role. Those of us who watched the reality show The Two Coreys know that Haim was not asked to reprise his role for the sequel and was very hurt over it. But by throwing him a bone and putting him in this miniscule cameo at the end, they gave Lost Boys fans what we were, um, thirsting for: the potential for a full-on Corey vs. Corey sequel. But now, sadly, that second sequel will never happen and Corey will never have his second moment in the spotlight.
