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When you’re a kid, the forbidden is so exciting. Being told ‘you’re not old enough to watch that’ when it comes to films just makes you want to view said films even more. It’s the desire to know what your caregivers are hiding, how something could possibly be so terrifying that you’re not allowed to see it at your big, mature age. I remember how cool I thought my school friends were, who were allowed to stay up late with their parents and watch horror films. Deep down I thought I wouldn’t be able to hack it, but I never let it show. I pretended I’d watched films that I hadn’t, I’d brag about my parents letting me watch whatever I wanted until one day, at age 10, my family finally decided to let me watch The Lost Boys after my incessant arguing. To my surprise, it wasn’t scary. The pillow I had resting on my lap for emergencies never once covered my eyes.

What I was left with was so much cooler than scary – it was camp.

When you don’t really know what the horror genre truly is, what it can achieve and the boundaries it can push, you expect to just be left with scares. When you don’t know the power of queer subtext, the amount of representation that truly lies within the genre and that horror can be more than ghosts, goblins and ghouls, the first time you witness something outside of this realm has the power to stick with you. Whilst The Lost Boys isn’t the most thematically rich, queer or representational horror movie out there, it was the first horror flick I watched that introduced me to camp horror, a sub-genre full of the representation I didn’t even know I needed. It has remained to this day my favourite movie of all time, and I believe it should go down in history as a camp horror classic. It’s incredibly important to me, and the first movie I remember watching and feeling a deep amount of love for.

For those who have yet to witness it, The Lost Boys (1987) follows a family who move to Santa Carla, known as the murder capital of the world, and find it overrun by vampires. When son Michael begins to turn into a vampire himself, his younger brother Sam does everything he can to save him. With the help of brothers Edgar and Alan Frog, the three attempt to find the vampire who is head of the clan, with the goal of turning Michael back to his human form before it’s too late.

I wouldn’t say The Lost Boys is entirely devoid of scares. The practical effects are modest for the 80’s, our villains are truly menacing, and we get to see them at their gnarliest. From feeding time to sleeping upside down, the film bares all, reminding us why vampires are such a staple in this genre. It plays around with the tropes we know and love, such as necklaces made of garlic and splashing holy water in the faces of the enemies, yet it has enough flair and uniqueness to stand on its own. Despite all this, it is its campiness that’s prevalent throughout the snappy 97-minute run-time.

To start with, it’s undeniably cheesy and over-the-top from start to finish. From it’s costuming, hair and make-up to its flawless soundtrack, it embraces everything that makes the 80’s an absolute blast to look back on. The characters look as though they’re handpicked from a 1980’s punk music video, looking both sexy and scary simultaneously. You don’t want to root for them as they’re the villains, but they’re so cool and inviting that it’s hard not to. The script is witty and razor sharp but outrageously corny, with hilarious line delivery from our actors who understood the assignment perfectly. It doesn’t take itself too seriously and embraces its silliness from start to finish. Everything leads up to an exciting climax full of blood, gore and some of the best kills ever put to screen. ‘Death by stereo’ will always be one of my favourite scenes in horror and is just one example of how quotable this movie truly is.

I adore everything about this campy little carnage-fuelled horror, but what stuck with me the most is the theme of being an outsider. Yes, the vampires are villains, and they don’t exactly receive or deserve a redemption arc, but they’re often portrayed as outside-the-box outcasts. They’re different from everybody else, they’re avoided, and they’re misunderstood. They don’t fit in with everybody else in their town because they’re so different, and instead of shying away, they embrace this. They look out for one another and despite being a very dysfunctional one, they are a family. The reason The Lost Boys is known for changing the representation of vampires within pop culture is because we can relate to them. Just like me, they didn’t dress like everybody else, act like everybody else or listen to the same music as everybody else. They are young, cool and stylish, not quite the monsters that they had been depicted as prior. They might be vampires, but at heart they’re a group of rock-and-roll misfits.

Horror fans can experience so much representation, queer subtext and campiness within the horror genre, and The Lost Boys perhaps isn’t the best example of this. However, it was the film that not only made me a horror fan, but a huge fan of camp horrors. It opened my eyes and made me realise that horror movies aren’t just a vessel for fear but can be a fantastic way to represent groups that aren’t normally represented, especially back in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys is about a group of people having fun, not sticking to the rules and not worrying about the future. They get to stay young forever, and its audience in some roundabout way desires to be like them, which is what makes this movie work.

It made me feel seen, and feeling seen is incredibly important to me as part of the LGBTQIA+ community.