Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It's fun to be a vampire.

The transition from Dracula to Edward Cullen seems to be lacking in some pivotal points. How did teenagers become a central role in the vampire theme? Obviously Dracula by Bram Stoker is aimed towards an older audience with its not-so subtle bisexual tendencies, New Age women, and overall sexual tension. The films featuring vampires after Dracula such as Nosferatu (1922), The Last Man on Earth (1964), or even Fright Night (1985) weren’t exactly geared towards a particular teenage population, much less the teenage girl which soon became the typical consumer. So what caused a shift in mainstream vampirism to become attractive to a younger audience?

The Lost Boys (1987) happened. This movie totally introduced a new era of viewers to the vampire genre as a whole. The movie features classic 80s heartthrobs such as Jason Patric, Corey Haim, Jami Gertz, Alex Winter, and Corey Feldman, and it also has an amazingly 80s soundtrack. Despite having a mostly teenage cast, the movie doesn’t shy away from central vampiric themes like classic campy gore and violence

good old fashioned heteronormative romance/sexual tension

a little bit of homoeroticism

and your classic oiled up, beefy strongman blaring Tim Cappello's "I Still Believe" on the saxophone.

So, how did this movie exactly become so well-known and a cult classic? Thank the Brat Pack for that. The Brat Pack refers to specific teenage actors and actresses in the 1980s such as Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Andrew McCarthy, Emilio Estevez and Demi Moore. The most famous Brat Pack movies were The Breakfast Club (1985), St. Elmo's Fire (1985), and Sixteen Candles (1984). Brat Pack movies were usually coming-of-age films about typically white teenagers growing up in the disillusioned 1980s. The Lost Boys fit this description in an unusual way with the addition of vampires, but it paid off in the end. The story of awkward, good-looking, wise-cracking kids only becomes more complicated and twisted with the taste for blood thrown in the mix. This film was released at exactly the right time for teenagers to become engrossed in the world of vampires. While The Lost Boys did make its debut at Brat Pack peak, it certainly wouldn't be regarded as one of those films, mainly because none of the true Brat Pack members are in the movie, and its distinction of fantasy and horror in the film. True Brat Pack films were more grounded in reality with few exceptions.

Many modern vampire shows, books, and movies owe their fame in the young adult world to this cult film. In my opinion, media that has had success concerning the teenage consumer such as Blade (1998), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), Twilight the novel series (2005-2008), and True Blood (2008-2014) would not have had the same success if The Lost Boys hadn’t been created in the style it was and at the time period it had been. 

Diversity in Aliens (1986) and Its Impact

We all know Hollywood has a diversity problem. #OscarsSoWhite has been trending on and off since the nominations were announced and after the ceremony aired, due to the lack of any people of color in the top four categories for the second year in a row. Several actors and actresses even boycotted the awards show, refusing to go and speaking out about the issue whene given the opportunity. I could write a whole other blog post about the absence of women in positions of power in Hollywood. When discussing Aliens, it is important to remember this is a movie made in 1986. With that being said, there is about as much diversity as to be expected. Sigourney Weaver’s character, Ellen Ripley, a strong leading woman, has plenty of screen time. The movie passes the Bechdel test by which two, named female characters talk to each other about something other than a man. 

In fact, when the rules for the Bechdel test were first introduced by Allison Bechdel in her comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For, a character in the strip references the first installment in the Alien series that premiered in 1979 as being the last movie she was able to see that adhered to the rules of the test. The majority of the characters are white and male, but the only other woman with significant lines is a tough Latina. Half of the time she’s spoken to, it’s to insult her. She has good comebacks though. She also shows bravery in key moments of the movie, when lesser men are too scared to fight the aliens.

There are no representations of the LGBT community, something that Hollywood still has a lot of progress to make on, 30 years later. The benefit of having a diverse cast is that the audience will see themselves represented in film. Another benefit of having storylines from diverse experiences is having more perspectives for the audience to relate to. When it comes to representation, the more the merrier. The two black characters are men, both in positions of power. Ridley’s interactions with the men in the movie largely consist of her ideas being discredited or outright ignored, a frustrating situation given she’s the only one with experience dealing with this alien lifeform.

 In the end, of four cast members left, she’s the only one who ventures to go in and save the little girl, Newt, they encountered on the desolate planet. I think this is a fitting last act for Ripley.