Single Mothers’ Irresponsible Sexuality and the Male Savior in The Lost Boys
The Lost Boys is the story of a divorced mom, Lucy, played by Dianne Weist, and her teenaged sons, Michael and Sam, played by Jason Patrick and Cory Haim, respectively. The family was left in dire financial straits by Lucy’s divorce, and is forced to move to the vampire-infested town of Santa Carla, California to live with Lucy’s elderly, eccentric father in his house full of taxidermy paraphernalia.
I intend to show that this movie’s central theme is one of control; specifically that men must command a woman’s sexuality, otherwise her faulty decisions will result in harm or death to her family. In addition, according to The Lost Boys, the only acceptable place for a woman and appropriate place to raise her children is in the home of a husband or a father. I will show how Lucy is portrayed as being an irresponsible mother for pursuing a relationship with her (poorly, as it turns out) chosen suitor, and ultimately requires saving by her male family members from that bad choice.
Shortly after their arrival in town, Lucy meets Max, a debonair older bachelor and video storeowner who gives her a job then promptly begins to court her. Her elder son, Michael, meets a pretty girl on the boardwalk who is attached to a disaffected gang of mysterious, troublemaking teens with whom he becomes entangled. Lucy’s second son, Sam, meets up with the Frog brothers, bizarre part-time vampire hunters and children of the town’s comic book shop owners. It is they who first alert Sam to Santa Carla’s “vampire menace”.
During the course of the movie, the viewer discovers that Michael’s sexy and dangerous new friends are actually part of that menace. In a scene like something from a bad acid trip, Michael himself is all but turned into one of the beautiful undead after a night of carousing, riding motorcycles in a dangerous fashion, and drinking what he thinks is wine, but is actually blood. The rest of the movie concentrates on Sam and the Frog brothers’ attempts to uncover the leader of the vampires and save Michael and his mother from them.
When the story begins, we learn that Lucy’s family has had a rough year as a result of her divorce – her elder son Michael points out that they are “flat broke” and that’s why they’ve been forced to come live in California with Lucy’s father. The viewers don’t know the specific circumstances behind the divorce, but the implication is made that it was Lucy’s decision, and the results were unpleasant. Lucy indicates that she ended up with nothing because she didn’t want a long court battle. Her father says that she is the only woman he knows whose life was not improved by divorce. The suggestion is that Lucy has made a mistake in leaving her marriage at all, a decision that is going to cost everyone dearly.
The first night they are in town, Lucy and the children go to the local boardwalk. There, Lucy wanders into Max’s video store. Max is a successful 40-something gentleman who takes an immediate interest in Lucy, and even gives her a job on the spot, easily drawing her into his web, a fact that the viewer isn’t aware of until the very end of the movie. Poor, self-absorbed, lonely Lucy doesn’t see anything wrong with this stranger’s generosity, or in dating the boss. The first visual Max has of Lucy is of her helping a small child find his mother – he gives her a lollipop for her troubles before intuiting that Lucy needs a job. The entire scene assumes that Lucy is a stereotypical flake – albeit a kind, nurturing one – who needs a man to take her in hand. When Max offers her the job, she says contritely, “I look that needy, huh?”
Meanwhile, Lucy’s sons are busy getting involved with their respective groups of troublemakers. Michael meets the mysterious Star, a beautiful girl who will lead him down Death’s primrose path. She is the perfect bait for Max’s diabolical plan. Sam, on the other hand, is making the acquaintance of the bizarre Frog brothers, the diminutive vampire hunters who will assist him in his quest to save his family from Max’s gang. Mom is doing her own thing while her children are “running wild” in the streets, getting into trouble that will threaten them all. This is an ongoing theme in the movie. Lucy is too busy and generally clueless to see what is going on right in front of her, or even when characters point out the danger, she chooses not to see or believe.
The second night in town, the viewer doesn’t know where Lucy is, but Michael is back on the boardwalk, participating in all kinds of delinquency. He buys a leather jacket, gets his ear pierced (a serious rebellion in 1987!), mixes it up with Star and her “friends”, climbs into condemned ruins, smokes pot, gets drunk (on blood, no less), and is turned into a vampire! Where is Mom?
The movie abounds with moments like this, and takes every possible shot at depicting Lucy as infantile, irresponsible, or downright neglectful. Lucy repeatedly either “abandons” her children, or takes her suitor’s side over theirs in disagreements. When her younger son Sam discovers that Max is actually the head vampire, he tries to warn Lucy, but she dismisses him out of hand. When she invites Max for dinner, Sam and the Frog brothers stage a series of vampire tests. The tests reveal nothing due to Michael having earlier invited Max into their home. Lucy loses her temper, and Max leaves early after giving Sam a lecture that he his not trying to steal the boys’ mother away from them. He shows some compassion and understanding of Sam’s situation, even if it is all part of an elaborate ruse to win Lucy’s trust. Lucy, on the other hand, is portrayed as hysterical and unsympathetic to her son. This remains the case throughout the movie, while the boys and men are shown to be sensitive and deeply dedicated to their respective causes, caring more about the greater good than their own individual desires, at least on the surface.
When Lucy walks Max out after the debacle at the dinner table, he points out to her in a patronizing tone, “Kids Sam’s age need discipline, otherwise, they run all over you.” Lucy insists, in an unconvincing and small-voiced objection, that Sam doesn’t do that. Max’s expression softens to something condescending as he observes what a protective mother she is. What he doesn’t say is that’s exactly what he’s been seeking for his family, or that he actually thinks she’s sadly misguided and wrong. It does, however, show clearly on his face.
The night her entire family is fortifying their home and bracing for a full-scale vampire attack, Lucy is once again out on a date with Max. Previously that afternoon, after Sam, Michael and the Frog brothers raided the vampires’ lair, rescued Star and a small boy in her care named Laddie, killing one of the vampires, Sam rushes to the video store to ask his mother for help. He’s soaked in blood and filth and has obviously been in some serious trouble. He’s nearly hysterical, struggling desperately to tell her what’s going on. Lucy’s response is hard and mean: “I’m going to see Max tonight, and you’re trying to ruin it for me!” Again, the irresponsible mother dismisses the needs of her child in favor of spending time with her suitor. She doesn’t even bother asking what happened to him or if he’s all right.
Lucy is literally the last to know what is happening between her family and Max’s vampires. Even her father, who plays only a peripheral comic role through the main action of the movie, looks on with suspicion throughout key scenes and eventually saving the day (night?). Lucy has to have the entire business spelled out for her by the men in the closing scene.
Lucy doesn’t get the facts until the men feed them to her, when she arrives home with Max after their date. She finds ample evidence that a fierce battle between her children and the vampires has just ended. Lucy declares her confusion aloud even when the rubble of the house and the corpses of the defeated vampires are staring her in the face. Max takes a moment, in classic villain fashion, to explain his diabolical plot to lure Lucy and her children into his vision of the prefect patriarchal family. “It was you I was after all along, Lucy. I knew that if I could get Sam and Michael into the family, there’s no way you could say no. It was all going to be so perfect, Lucy. Your boys and my boys.”
Max then grabs Sam, and threatens to kill him unless Lucy accepts his “dark embrace”. Lucy surrenders without a word, only to be saved at the last moment by her father’s unexpected and clever intervention. Earlier in the film, we saw him sharpening giant fence pole stakes outside. He attached these to the front of his jeep and drove through the house, running Max through and destroying him just before he could kill Lucy and Sam. Not only is Lucy saved from her own bad choices in men, but her father also rescues the children who were put in danger by those choices in the first place.
The true moral centerpiece of the film, camouflaged within the teen action theatrics of Michael and Sam, is the story of Lucy, their mother. She is making her first tentative attempts to work and date after her divorce, which, according to one conversation she has with her father, was not an amicable one. Max, her boss at the video store, seems the perfect suitor: polite, successful, intelligent, and romantic. Most importantly, Max seems genuinely interested in Lucy’s children. Which he is – just not for the reasons she thinks. Max is actually the patriarch of the vampire gang with whom Michael has been carousing. His ultimate goal is to build the group into a “real family.” He desires a patriarchal nuclear unit consisting of mother, father and children, which he intends to achieve by acquiring a traditional mother figure, Lucy.
While Lucy is embroiled in her burgeoning romance, her children are left to fend for themselves, to fall in with the “wrong crowd,” and almost end up undead. The underlying moral of The Lost Boys is revealed: Lucy’s “irresponsible [i.e. independent] sexuality” (Auerbach, 1995, p. 168) brings danger to the lives of her children. According to the metaphor of Max and his vampires, only “a sheltering family headed by the right patriarch” (Auerback, 1995, p. 180) can restore the correct balance disturbed by Lucy’s misguided attempts at female independence. This was a viewpoint characteristic of the Reagan era during which the film was made, a period during which the ruling class sought desperately (and to some measure, successfully) to re-assemble previously dominant social structures that were partially deconstructed during the cultural revolutions of the 1960’s and 70’s. Prominent among these was the default nuclear family, as evidenced by the rise of the “Religious Right” and their emphasis on “family values.” Family, under this rubric, was narrowly defined as a married mother and father and their children.
Weist’s divorced single mother, Lucy, is a metaphor for the “new”, independent woman of that period. The film portrays her as a threat to her own children by neglect as a result. By pursuing her own selfish agenda at their expense, she also poses a danger, ultimately, to the fabric of the family and society itself. In the end, although Lucy and her family evade the clutches of the patriarchal Max, it is only through the enterprise of her father – a symbolic reassertion of the primacy of the paternal home, the only proper alternative to marriage – that they survive. Lucy is still not left in charge of her own romantic, sexual, or parental destiny, but is instead rescued and directed by a series of men.
Although The Lost Boys appears, on the surface, just another slick teen horror flick, it is actually a metaphorical celebration of the triumph of patriarchy over the independent woman. A morality tale meant to warn all those “superwomen” of the 1980’s, who insisted on “having it all,” against their dangerous path toward family destruction.
In the end, the men are the heroes of The Lost Boys. Only males act in the film’s events. Lucy is little more than a backdrop, the reason why all the bad things happen. She is passive, and has events acted upon her and her family because of her irresponsible decisions: first to divorce, then to move to Santa Carla, and finally to accept the suit of a monster, Max. As the passive, selfish female victim, Lucy must be saved by the active men and their selfless dedication to their family.
Lucy is the stereotypical “bad mother” of film cast in a 1980’s mold with a dash of vampire theatrics thrown in for dramatic spice. Whatever the packaging, the message is the same: if a woman seeks fulfillment outside the traditional family unit, she is doomed to misery, and puts her entire family and the very fabric of patriarchal society at risk by doing so. Dating the wrong man takes on a whole new meaning in The Lost Boys!
