Confession time: I never managed to sit through more than 10’ minutes of Joel Schumacher’s St. Elmo’s Fire, even though at a certain critical point of my pre-teen years a local cable network was playing it on a daily basis. Had I known my pre-teen self was so in tune with the global zeitgeist, I could have tried to get some money out of it. Oh, well.

As Jonathan Bernstein would say, the amount of times St. Elmo’s was showcased on pay-per-view channels might suggest it was a hit movie (it wasn’t) and/or it somehow conveyed the spirit of the time (it didn’t). What it actually managed to do was:

a) predate Rob Lowe’s real life bad boy turn;

b) introduce general audiences to the notion that Judd Nelson’s perf in The Breakfast Club was mostly a stroke of luck;

c) mindfuck us into embracing the fact that Demi Moore would be around for a loooooong time;

d) give many of us our first shot of Young Actors Overcompensating For Being Desperately Out Of Touch With Their Peers.

To this day, I suspect it mostly works like a Brat Pack yearbook. And the “interconnecting storylines” thing (which is edited all out of sequence here) was hardly a new trick in the Eighties. Still, two things cannot be denied: the script set the template for ensemble TV dramas such as Melrose Place, and the theme song’s clip was still on the air months after the film had died at the box office.

And now, let’s all help ourselves to a money shot montage. And/or Molly Lambert’s screenshot history.

Random wisdom from YouTube commentators: “do anybody know óf other movies where a lead character play the sax?”

Ah, the memories.

Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys is widely celebrated as two things: a piece of gaudy, yet coherent ’80s horror-lite, and a textbook example of sneaky (x) = homosexual lore.

Both things are true.

The trailer introduces baby-faced Corey Haim as the nominal hero of the picture (and he is, kinda), with an odd couple of sidekicks, while broody Jason Patric is placed in the victim/antagonist-in-training slot (and he is, definitely). Plus, the violence/humour switch is hit almost as much as it would come into play.

On the other hand, the dude who put nipples on the Batman suit was working overtime (this discussion reads like a bullet list of do’s and don’t-mind-if-I-do’s), but you can’t quite let yourself drown in the gayness here. The most spectacular pieces of scenery (such as the underground Art Déco hotel which serves as the clan’s home) are kept under wraps, too. Guess the power struggle within the family angle was a safe box office bet, unlike the look at me, I’m so cool one.

And you see really little of The Boys, but plenty of the final 20’. Talk about sending out mixed signals.

Great use of Echo & The Bunnymen’s “People Are Strange” version, though, just like in the credit sequence (which, seeing it here and now, makes me realize why I love my new home so much - it’s close to the infamous Viareggio boardwalk, aka Santa Carla minus the funhouse).