Characters / The Lost Boys

Humans

Frog Brothers

Edgar and Alan

Played by: Corey Feldman (Edgar) and Jamison Newlander

• The Alleged Expert: The Frog brothers are comic store employees by day, but advertise themselves as professional vampire hunters. While they do have some useful and accurate lore to share, there are also some pretty big holes in their knowledge. For instance, they go to the vampires' lair, ready to stake them in their coffins, only to discover that they sleep hanging from the ceiling like bats, which they are completely shocked by. Then, the Frogs climb up to stake them and start with the weakest-looking one, at which point his death screams (predictably) wake the others up, which nearly gets Sam and the Frogs killed.
• The Comically Serious: Edgar and Allan are about as cheerful as their namesake, and take themselves as seriously as CIA agents, yet they are some of the nerdiest teenage comic store employees you'll ever see.
• Deadpan Snarker: They quip a lot to mask their terror.
• Fantastic Racism: Edgar and Alan have hostile reservations against vampires, even ones like Star, Laddie, and Michael who are resisting the transformation. This is justified if one infers that the only vampires they've ever dealt with are like David and his crew.
• Genre Savvy: Edgar and Alan make Sam read vampire comics to get him familiar with how to fight vampires.
• The Hero: The Frog Brothers are the main heroes of the film.
• Noble Bigot with a Badge: While not cops, Edgar and Alan hate all vampires, not just the bad ones. However, they are willing to help half-vampires get their humanity back, if grudgingly.
• Shout-Out:
  • Edgar and Alan are named in honor of Edgar Allan Poe.
  • Edgar wears Rambo's red bandana and the way he speaks feels like a Sylvester Stallone impression.
• Vampire Hunter: The Frog Brothers are committed to fighting bloodsuckers after being exposed to horror comics due to their parents owning a comic book store.

Michael Emerson

Michael Emerson

Played by: Jason Patric

• And Then John Was a Zombie: Michael becomes a vampire. Thankfully, it's not permanent.
• Big Brother Instinct: Michael naturally has this toward Sam.
• Demoted to Extra: Michael was introduced as the protagonist in the original Lost Boys film. The various follow-ups all have him range from a supporting character to being outright absent.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Michael promises Sam he'll find answers to his new vampire problem, and sneaks out to go get answers from Star, but winds up just having sex with her instead. He comes back the next morning as solution-less as he left.
• Face of a Thug: Michael has the outward appearance of a delinquent, but he's quite even-tempered. Both Sam and his mother note how out of character hit is of him to act sullen and distant when he turns into a vampire. In The Lost Boys: The Lost Girl comic he's even seen volunteering at the nursing home.
• Hanging by the Fingers: Michael is taunted by David and the other Lost Boys until he joins them in dangling beneath a railroad bridge. The strain and vibrations of a passing train cause his fingers to lose grip, and he slips more and more until he finally falls.
• Heroic Willpower: Michael uses this at the last minute to defeat David.
• Hippie Name: Discussed. Michael suspects his love interest Star had flowerchild parents because of her name, and mentions he came very close to having a Hippie Name himself.
  Star: What do you mean?
  Michael: Ex-hippies. I came this close to being called Moon Beam or Moon Child or something.
• I Ate WHAT?!: Michael is tricked into drinking blood by illusions that make it look like his Chinese food is worms one minute, noodles the next, and again with rice/maggots ^note it's left somewhat ambiguous what exactly is the illusion and what is real. By the time that he's told that the red beverage in the bottle is blood, he doesn't believe anything he hears.
  David: (to Michael as he's eating some of the Chinese food) Maggots. You're eating maggots, Michael, how do they taste?
  Star: (to Michael as he is about to drink from the bottle of "red wine") Don't. It's blood.
• Love at First Sight: At the concert, Michael sees Star for the first time, and is immediately smitten with her.
• Missing Reflection: Michael and Sam discovers Michael is a vampire when they both see he has no reflection in the mirror.
• The Moving Experience: Michael lived in Phoenix, Arizona with his younger brother Sam until the divorce of their parents. Michael and Sam moved with their mother Lucy to the coastal community of Santa Carla, California to live with their maternal grandpa because they were flat broke.
• Nom de Mom: The comic Lost Boys: Reign of Frogs has Grandpa referred to as "Mr. Emerson", which would mean Michael and Sam reverted to their mother's surname after their parents' divorce.
• Sex Equals Love: Michael and Star really don't share that many lines with each other before they have sex halfway through the film.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: Michael and Star's first time, which shows them kissing on a bed then cuts to images of clouds in the sky. The faint bat-noises and constantly shifting camera angles imply that this is actually the POV of the Lost Boys returning home right before sunrise, which might explain why David wasn't upset about Star having sex with Michael instead of making him her first kill; he was in too much of a hurry to get to the cave before sunrise to notice! While the original scene lasted about three times longer, it didn't get any more explicit (you can't even be sure if Star is actually topless or Michael just slid down the straps of her camisole).
• Totally 18: Michael is eighteen during The Lost Boys.
• Wacky Racing: Michael is challenged by David to a deadly motorcycle race, which Michael loses.

Sam Emerson

Sam Emerson

Played by: Corey Haim

• Ambiguously Gay: He has a poster of Rob Lowe in a provocative pose on his wall — specifically, on the door to his closet. He also croons both the boy and girl verses from "I Ain't Got a Man" while taking a bubble bath. However, Word of God explains this in the commentary: the Rob Lowe and Molly Ringwald posters in Sam's room were intended as a Shout-Out to the John Hughes teen movies of the time, and Schumacher directed St. Elmo's Fire, which starred Lowe. It still doesn't explain Sam wearing a 'Born to Shop' T-shirt to bed, and some of his fashion choices aren't really justified by "it's the '80s". Maybe Sam's just a metrosexual ahead of his time?invoked
• Attack on the Heart: Through the use of his crossbow, Sam kills Dwayne by impaling him into the radio.
• Breaking and Bloodsucking: Sam hauls one of the creepy taxidermy animals into the closet. When he turns around, half-vampire Michael has suddenly appeared in the room by way of the second story window. After some arguing between the brothers, Star arrives, first yelling up to them from the ground, then suddenly floating in via the window.
• Door Handle Scare: We see Sam taking a bubble bath while his brother Michael slowly comes walking up the stairs. Sam sings to himself completely clueless, but his dog Nanook next to the bathtub hears Michael's footsteps coming up on the other side of the bathroom door. The music doesn't go silent, but in fact increases with the tension. Finally Michael stands outside the bathroom door, banging it, turning the knob with the camera focusing in as it rotates. Sam dunks completely under the water just as Michael's confronted by a growling and snarling Nanook, who then tackles Michael out the door and down the stairs, with the door slamming shut after him. Sam emerges from the water just after everything's all over.
• Dude, Not Funny!: Sam's reaction after Michael (fresh from joining David's group of vampires) makes a joke about their grandfather going on a date with the Widow Johnson.
  Michael: What'd you stuff for her? Mr. Johnson?
  Sam: That wasn't funny, Mike!
• The Moving Experience: Sam lived in Phoenix, Arizona with his older brother Michael until the divorce of their parents. Sam and Michael moved with their mother Lucy to the coastal community of Santa Carla, California to live with their maternal grandpa because they were flat broke.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Sam's ability to rattle off the issue numbers and plot summaries of various superhero comics is treated as a badass feat.
• Nom de Mom: The comic Lost Boys: Reign of Frogs has Grandpa referred to as "Mr. Emerson", which would mean Michael and Sam reverted to their mother's surname after their parents' divorce.
• Poster-Gallery Bedroom: Sam's bedroom, to be precise. Most prominently, he has posters of Molly Ringwald and Rob Lowe on his walls.
• Vampires Hate Garlic: After Sam discovers Michael is a vampire, he began to sleep with his mother in her bed and with garlic around his neck. Turns out garlic is completely useless against vampires.

Lucy Emerson

Lucy Emerson

Played by: Dianne Wiest

• Adults Are Useless: Lucy doesn't believe there are vampires; she believes the more rational explanation that her sons are having trouble coping with the idea of her dating again. Ironically, her current boyfriend turns out to be the head vampire, who had his "boys" target her sons for recruitment/turning so she would join willingly and complete the "family".
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: When Lucy goes to apologize to Max for leaving their date early, Sam reads a vampire comic book that features a page all about the dangers of "Hellhounds: a special guard dog for vampires who sleep during the day". A few seconds later, Lucy almost gets eaten by Max's pet dog (and guard dog) Thorn, prompting Sam to save her.
• Love at First Sight: Lucy falls in love with a man named Max, who work at the video store.
• Meaningful Name: Lucy, of course, shares her name with Mina's ill-fated friend from Dracula. And she does wind up pursued by a vampire who wishes to make her his bride — a vampire named Max, itself possibly an allusion to Max Schreck of Nosferatu fame.
• The Moving Experience: Lucy packed up and took her sons with her from Phoenix, Arizona, to live with her eccentric, widowed father in Santa Carla, California.
• Pushover Parents:
  • Being an ex-hippie Nice Girl who wants to be friends with her two teenage sons works about as well for Lucy as you'd expect, although she does start to put her foot down later in the movie.
    Max: I tell ya, boys like Sam need discipline. Otherwise they walk all over you.
    Lucy: Oh, he doesn't walk all over me.
  • On the other hand, Michael and Sam aren't at all embarrassed by her affection for them, and are both quite devoted to her. in the climax, even as Sam is being held hostage in a headlock by Max, he still urges Lucy not to become Max's 'bride'.
• Take Me Instead: Lucy is willing to let Max bite her in order to spare Michael and Sam. Grandpa saves her from this fate at the last second by crashing his jeep into the house, sending a stake flying through Max's heart.

Grandpa

Grandpa

Played by: Barnard Hughes

• Adults Are Useless: Subverted at the end, when Grandpa returns just in time to kill the last vampire in the house and nonchalantly reveal he knew all along that there were loads of vamps around.
  Grandpa: One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach, all the damn vampires.'
• Big Damn Heroes: Grandpa with his Cool Car saves the day in the end.
• Car Fu: With his Cool Car, no less!
• Chekhov's Gun: We see Grandpa working on the fence, and his Jeep is still filled with fence posts when he goes on his date. At the end of the movie, Grandpa crashes his car headlong into the house, and one of the fence posts stakes Max through the heart.
• Cool Car: Say what you will about him, Grandpa has one sweet ride.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Grandpa seems to be just another senile old guy, until the end where his car explodes into the house, killing Max, and it's revealed that he knew Santa Clara was infested with vampires all along.
• Deus ex Machina: Grandpa crashes through the wall in his jeep and impales Max with a fence post, then reveals that he knew about vampires all along.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: He's immediately killed off in The Lost Boys: The Lost Girl.
• Foreshadowing: Grandpa shuts his office door when he sees Max in the house, and in a later scene has covered his car in large wooden stakes.
• Funny Background Event: Grandpa making a spooked face at Max when he arrives for dinner.
• Insane Troll Logic: Grandpa's attitude towards television definitely falls into this category.
  Sam: Wait, wait. You have a TV?
  Grandpa: No. I just like to read the TV Guide. Read the TV Guide, you don't need a TV.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Grandpa pretends to be an eccentric old man (and is to a certain extent), but he's also a fairly skilled vampire hunter.
• Taxidermy Terror: Grandpa has a serious craftsman hobby, and leaves several stuffed presents by Sam's bedside. Disgusted by them, Sam hides them in his closet.

Vampires

The Lost Boys

• '80s Hair: The Lost Boys all have glorious hair-metal-inspired mullets and long hair.
• All There in the Manual: Apart from him, David's gang are for the most part Satellite Characters who rarely speak. The novelization gives them individual traits.
• Eye Color Change: Vampires' eyes go from their natural colour to golden-red when they transform into 'vampire mode'.
• Family of Choice: They seem to be genuinely close, and the others are enraged when Marko is killed.
• Fanservice: The titular "lost boys" are all very easy on the eyes.
• Feral Vampires: One of the Trope Makers. Instead of being glamorous aristocrats, the vampires are portrayed as nomadic hoodlums.
• Flight: Vampires can defy gravity to some extent. Gravity has little meaning to vampires.
• Foreshadowing: The merry-go-round sequence foreshadows the order in which the Lost Boys die. Marko dies first, Paul second, Dwayne third, and David last.
• Game Face: When they go on the attack, all of them develop yellow eyes, shed their eyebrows and grow sharp fangs and nails.
• Hell Hotel: The Lost Boys' base of operations is the underground remains of a hotel that was swallowed up by the earth during the 1906 earthquake.
  David: In 1906, when the big one hit San Francisco, the ground opened up, and this place took a header, right into the crack. So now it’s ours.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Along with Near Dark, this movie rewrote the book on vampires, in the same way An American Werewolf in London and The Howling (also both in the same year) rewrote the book on werewolves. Notably, while they have many of the folkloric strengths and weaknesses (even sleeping in native soil is alluded to, with the vampires' lair described as "one big coffin"), the one they play with the most is the "invitation". Vampires can enter a residence uninvited, but if you do invite them, you lose all power over them while inside, including attempting to exploit any weaknesses vampires naturally have.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers!: David and his friends revel in this mentality. It's pretty hard for security guards and other authoritative figures except for Max to keep them from going wherever they want or doing whatever they want, since those people tend to go "missing" afterwards.
• There's No Kill like Overkill: How they lay waste to a group of punk rockers/skinheads having a beach bonfire party.
• Vampire Procreation Limit: A person becomes a half-vampire by drinking a vampire's blood, but won't become a full vampire until they drink human blood (the desire to do so being increasingly difficult to resist over time).

David

David

Played by: Kiefer Sutherland

• Affably Evil: He might enjoy carnage and mischief, but David does seem to genuinely like Michael and aside from a group of Surf-Nazis he's never shown attacking someone who didn't antagonize him first.
• Dark Reprise: David repeats Grandpa's closing line in The Lost Girl, only he specifies "vampire hunters".
• The Dragon: While initially appearing to be the Big Bad, David is actually this to Max, the actual Big Bad.
• Dying as Yourself: After David dies, he looks noticeably younger and more innocent, even losing his beard.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: David really wants Michael to understand how awesome it would be to become a vampire, and Max really wants Lucy to understand how great it would be to be "part of the family." Neither can understand why they would have a problem with that little "soulless blood-sucking monster of the night" detail.
• Hypnotic Eyes: All vampires apparently have this power, but the only time it's used is when David makes Michael see Chinese takeout as maggots and worms.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: David is impaled on a pair of mounted deer antlers.
• Living Forever Is Awesome: It's his main sales pitch to Michael.
  "You'll never grow old, Michael and you'll never die. But you must feed."
• Not Quite Dead: David returns in The Lost Boys: The Lost Girl, having joined up with another vampire group.
• Peer Pressure Makes You Evil: David turns Michael after goading him into a race and offering him "wine" in what's ostensibly an initiation ceremony into David's gang.
• Senseless Phagia: The "wine" is David's blood, but Michael can't tell the difference. He's horrified to discover much later that he drank blood. The trope is toyed with earlier, when David mind-tricks Michael into believing that he's eating maggots and worms, but it's really just rice and noodles (or so it seems — it's not clear which version is real), which is why Michael dismisses Star's warning that the wine is blood.
• Tom the Dark Lord: The head vampire who leads them in regular acts of shockingly brutal murder is simply named David. His friends have the similarly normal names of Marko, Paul, and Dwayne, and their leader is Max.
• Wacky Racing: David challenges Michael to a deadly motorcycle race, which David wins.

Star

Star

Played by: Jami Gertz

• Abusive Parents: In the novelization, she comments that her father wished she'd never been born and her mother once almost killed her.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Subverted, as Star appears to be David's girlfriend but starts taking an interest in Michael, who, while still a teen rebel, is a nicer guy than David. The trope is also deconstructed in that even though we don't know how Star came to be involved with David, she doesn't seem to enjoy the life of a vampire very much, since she refuses to kill, even when David intentionally sets her up with Michael so that he can be her first kill, and the two end up having sex instead.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Out of all of the vampires, Star is the only one who never puts on her Game Face, and she is a good character.
• Big Sister Instinct: Star exhibits this toward Laddie, a young boy that the vampire gang kidnapped and started the process of turning into a vampire.
• Cute Monster Girl: Star never shows her Game Face like every other vampire in the film.
• Delicate and Sickly: She became a vampire to escape cystic fibrosis.
• Hippie Name: Discussed. Michael suspects Star had flowerchild parents because of her name.
• Naïve Everygirl: Star, at least as much as she can be in an R-rated movie.
• Parental Substitute: Star is very overprotective of Laddie.
• Sex Equals Love: Star and Michael really don't share that many lines with each other before they have sex halfway through the film.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: Star and Michael's first time, which shows them kissing on a bed then cuts to images of clouds in the sky. The faint bat-noises and constantly shifting camera angles imply that this is actually the POV of the Lost Boys returning home right before sunrise, which might explain why David wasn't upset about Star having sex with Michael instead of making him her first kill; he was in too much of a hurry to get to the cave before sunrise to notice! While the original scene lasted about three times longer, it didn't get any more explicit (you can't even be sure if Star is actually topless or Michael just slid down the straps of her camisole).
• Snicket Warning Label: Star warns Michael not to drink from an offered bottle, warning it is blood, but he ignores her advice.

Marko

Marko

Played by: Alex Winter

• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: He gets impaled through the chest with a stake by the Frog brothers while he is sleeping upside down.
• Number Two: Marko was the one who brought the 'wine bottle' containing vampire blood to David.
• The Quiet One: Marko has the fewest lines among all leading and supporting cast members - and by extension the four Lost Boys.

Paul

Paul

Played by: Brooke McCarter

• Beware of Vicious Dog: Paul is pushed by Nanook into a tub of holy water and garlic, which burns and dissolves him.
• Evil Is One Big, Happy Family: Paul is sincerely saddened at Marko's death.
• It Came from the Sink: After Paul is pushed into a bathtub full of holy water, his blood begins coming out of all the pipes, including through the bathroom and kitchen sinks.
• No-Sell: He scoffs when the Frog brothers try using garlic to stop him.
• Token Good Teammate: Downplayed. According to the novelisation, Star finds Paul to be the most approachable of the Lost Boys; he was the most recently turned before she and Laddie joined, and he's always trying to cheer her up with humour.

Dwayne

Dwayne

Played by: Billy Wirth

• Attack on the Heart: He gets shot in the chest with arrow by Sam (presumably near the heart) and is thrown and pinned into the stereo, where he is electrocuted until he explodes.
• Cool Big Bro: Shows signs of this kind of relationship with Laddie. He refers to him as "bud", and helps him get on his motorcycle at one point.
• Pastimes Prove Personality: In the novelisation, it's mentioned that he likes skateboarding.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: Not counting Star and Laddie, Dwayne's the only member of David's gang who has dark hair.

Laddie

Laddie

• The Baby of the Bunch: Laddie is considered part of the gang despite being a child who was turned very recently.
• Creepy Child: Laddie is the cutest kid you've ever seen... until he vamps out.
• Face on a Milk Carton: Laddie is prominently featured on one.
• Suddenly Speaking: He doesn't have a single line as a vampire apart from snarls, but he cries out Star's name exuberantly once cured.
• Undead Child: Laddie looks to be about eleven years old.

Spoiler Character

Max

Played by: Edward Hermann

• Affably Evil: The alpha vampire of Santa Carla, who nonetheless is a hospitable family man.
• Anti-Villain: He may be the Big Bad, but ignoring the "murderous vampire" part, he's just a lonely widower who wants a wife and mother for his boys.
• Big Bad: He's the head vampire, and the one really behind David and his gang.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Inverted Trope. At first the Big Bad seems to be David, the vampire pack leader trying to corrupt the main character into joining him, but it's revealed at the end that he answers to Max, who wants Sam and Michael's entire family turned.
• Evil Is One Big, Happy Family: Max refers to the Lost Boys as "his boys" at the end in a tone that shows he saw them as his sons and it's heavily implied they saw him as a father figure, and he is saddened by their deaths and the two families not being brought together.
• Final Boss: He's the last vampire standing following the deaths of David and his remaining gang, and must be killed for Michael, Star, and Laddie to turn back to normal.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Early on, Max tells the Lost Boys to leave his store, and they immediately do so without a fuss.
  • Max confuses the superstition of not seeing the bride before the marriage for being about not seeing the food before the meal. He plans to make his intended "bride" (Lucy) into food.
  • Max very formally requests permission to enter the house. Initially, it seems like an obvious giveaway that he's a vampire, but then he passes all the Frog brothers' vampire detection tests, confusing the issue until it's revealed him being invited in nullified the effects of the tests.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Max. A fence post destroys most of his torso, and he's flung backward several feet.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: He looks and acts very unremarkable compared to the Lost Boys.
• Must Be Invited: Played with. Vampires can enter a home uninvited, as seen during the climax, but if you invite them in first, you lose all power over them as long as they are inside your home — which includes rendering them invulnerable to your attacks or attempts to exploit their weaknesses and expose them as vampires. Max uses this to trick the protagonists into thinking he's human.
• Near-Villain Victory: Max comes within a hair's breadth of getting Lucy turned into a vampire before Grandpa intervenes.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: Being the head vampire, he's naturally the strongest one encountered by the protagonists. In stark contrast to David and his gang, who were eventually dispatched by Michael and the Frog Brothers, Max easily fends off all of them at once, and almost kills Sam.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Max is a perfectly normal-seeming video store clerk who is really the head of a pack of vicious vampires.
• Walking Spoiler: His true nature as a vampire and being the real leader of David's gang spoil the film's entire plot and ending.
• We Can Rule Together: We can parent together, anyway. Max believes his boys need a mother's influence, and that Lucy can provide it to them. He specifically told David to target her sons so that once they were turned, she couldn't refuse to be turned herself. His genuine and heartfelt (albeit not-really-negotiable) offer is to make her his vampire bride so they can lead his vampire "family" as father and mother.

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