The Lost Boys (1987/Blu-ray/Warner Home
Video)
Picture:
B+ Sound: B+ Extras: B+ Film: B
We are
quite familiar with Vampire films around here, in fact we’ve covered dozens of
titles over the past few years and you can read about them, as well as the
terrific essay posted here:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/222/Nosferatu
Two of
the better of the subgenre arrived almost simultaneously in 1987, those two
films would be Kathryn Bigelow’s Near
Dark and Joel Schumacher’s The Lost
Boys. Both are different in their
approach to the material and Near Dark
has survived a bit better over the years, but The Lost Boys has become a bigger hit and seems to have endured for
fans. There is no doubt that a large
part of the films success, both then and now, is the cast, which at the time
was young and inexperienced, but those same actors have emerged into some of
the best and brightest in the business.
Arriving
on Blu-ray from Warner, the film will arrive with great anticipation and fans
should be quite satisfied with the overall package, although the performance of
this Blu-ray is a bit on the disappointing side at times, more on that
later. The supplements should quench the
thirst though for the majority of the films fans, and it’s no surprise that
this film arrives on Blu-ray at the simultaneous release of the films sequel The Lost Boys: The Tribe, which is
about 20 years overdue and because of that fact, suffers tremendously. Despite liking the majority of Schumacher’s
body of work, he gets lucky with this film, but it has not aged nearly as well
as most think.
In some
respects this film works almost entirely because of the cast and the
cinematography by Michael Chapman (Taxi
Driver, Raging Bull, but aside
from that the film always felt dated on arrival and never really managed to
pull all the strings together, certainly not as well as Near Dark. Most of the
inexperience comes from the directing as Schumacher had only done a few films
up until this time and looking back now it’s apparent that the film is more of
a ‘teenie’ vampire film than it is serious, especially if you do a direct
comparison to Bigelow’s film.
The film
is presented for Blu-ray in a 1080p transfer framed at 2.40 X 1, was shot in
real anamorphic Panavision and displays a great range of detail, depth and
color that has not been seen before in home video releases. However, despite that, there are limitations
in overall sharpness. This is a 50GB
disc, so the storage space on the disc enables the entire film, along with
great extras to remain on one disc. The
majority of the close-ups in the film look good and demonstrate the resolution
that Blu-ray is capable of for back catalog titles, but other scenes look softer
and blacks are a shade off from time to time.
Aside from those few issues, the film still looks the best it has and
will satisfy most tastes, even the bloodiest ones.
Same goes
for the Dolby Digital TrueHD mix, which will come across boosted in comparison
to previous home video releases. Here we
finally get all of the films dynamics without the compressed sound that was
always evident earlier. Instead, we get
crisp detailed highs and smooth deep lows.
Some scenes work a bit better than others as it seems that scenes with
more activity (see action) are almost harsh in nature. Overall the sound feels ‘bigger’ and is
perhaps more along the lines of what those heard back in 1987 in theatrical
prints that were in 70mm blowups with their 4.1 Dolby magnetic 70mm stereo
sound.
The
extras are the real deal in this release as we get a terrific commentary track
by Schumacher (he always delivers good audio tracks), a 24-minute long
retrospective from 2001, 4 featurettes that details some of the actors in the
film, a featurette that runs 23-minutes that is more focused on the two Coreys,
12-minutes of deleted scenes, a photo gallery, Lou Gramm’s music video “Lost in the Shadows”, and the films
theatrical trailer, which is presented in 1080p resolution. The other supplements are standard
definition.
Fans
should be glad to finally get this film in High Definition and while there are
small issues with both the picture and the sound, those are overcome by the
wealth of extras and should appease most until a future release cancels out
some of the minor problems associated here.
Until then, enjoy!
- Nate Goss
