Banner Graphic, Volume 18, Number 46, Greencastle, Putnam County, 30 October 1987 — Page 6

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THE BANNERGRAPHIC October 30,1987

'The Lost Boys' Despite pizzazz, it's slumber that's found

Editor’s Note: Gordon Walters is professor of romance languages at DePauw University, where he teaches a variety of courses in film, including History of Film and Film Criticism. He has written on film for •‘Magil’s Survey of Cinema: Foreign Film,” and is a regular contributor to ‘‘Cinema Annual.” Walters reviews will appear in the BannerGraphic on a regular basis. By GORDON WALTERS Banner-Graphic Film Critic “The Lost Boys” is a comedyvampire thriller which, in the final analysis, attempts to sustain itself on pizzazz alone. But there’s a lot at stake here, and when we strike at the heart of the matter, we find that the film just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny by the light of day. Producer Richard Donner (who produced and directed “Ladyhawke” and “Goonies”) and director Joel Schumacher (“St. Elmo’s Fire”) were content to take a flimsy screenplay (by Janice Fischer, James Jeremias and Jeffrey Boam) and stand back and allow the whole project to deteriorate into a whirlwind. Cinematographer Michael Chapman and editor Robert Brown, abetted by a wild - albeit cleverly appropriate - - rock score, pretty well make off with the movie. A MIDDLE-AGED divorcee named Lucy (Diane Wiest) and her two sons, Michael (Jason Patrie) and Sam (Corey Haim), move from Phoenix to Santa Carla, Calif., to take up residence with Lucy’s endearingly eccentric father (Barnard Hughes). According to Grandpa, who uses Windex as after-shave and gives stuffed gophers to his friends as presents, Santa Carla is indeed “the murder capital of the world.”

Woody Herman dies at age 74

LOS ANGELES (AP) Big Band leader Woody Herman, who hit the charts in 1939 with “Woodchopper’s Ball” and kept in tune with America for much of the next half-century playing bebop, funk, jazz and rock, is dead at 74. The clarinetist died Thursday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center of cardiac arrest. He had suffered for weeks from heart failure, emphysema and pneumonia, had been confined to a wheelchair and had fallen on hard times, narrowly averting eviction from his home with help from Hollywood’s entertainment community. Herman’s best-known hits included “Apple Honey,” “Northwest Passage” and “Caledonia” but he was never content to stick with his old standbys during a career took him from smart ballrooms to African villages.

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Gordon Walters

The town is weird, even for California. The shots which run behind the film’s opening credits tip us off to what’s going on. Chapman’s camera glides in over the ocean to Santa Carla’s center of attention, an amusement park called the Boardwalk. Photos of missing children are plastered everywhere, and the area is frequented by a group of heavy-metal biker types headed by David (Kiefer Sutherland). David and his groupies - The Lost Boys - set their teeth for Michael, who eventually succumbs to a unique kind of peer pressure and to the charismatic David’s promise, “You’ll never die, Michael; you’ll never grow old.” Michael swigs generously from a bottle of blood and becomes one of the guys, but when Sam finds out that his brother is a vampire (“Wait’ll Mom finds out!” he threatens Michael), he is determined to save Michael’s soul. THE PLOT COAGULATES when Lucy begins to date a video-store owner named Max (Edward Herrmann). As you’ve noticed by now, almost nobody in this tale has a last name, but keep your eye on Max; he’s more important than you might think.

Through a series of young bands, usually dubbed “The Thundering Herd” for their fierce energy, Herman kept pace with a dizzying variety of styles. In the IQ6Os, he played with Stan Getz and Neal Hefti, shared the bill with The Who and Dionne Warwick and played arrangements of the Doors’ “Light My Fire.” “As both Duke Ellington and Igor Stravinsky have said, there are only two kinds of music: good ... and bad,” he said in 1986, his 50th year as a band leader. “We’re going to try like hell to play good, and it’ll swing. I assure you of that.” Financial troubles marred his later years. Herman lost his Hollywood Hills house, which he bought from Humphrey Bogart in 1946, in a 1985 Internal Revenue Service auction to recoup $1.6 million in back taxes, a situation he blamed on a personal

The vampire business and the visual appeal of the film hold our interest for a while. The vampires’ hang-out is a subterranean amusement park which sank into a fault during a 1906 earthquake. The lair is decorated in punk-heavy chic, and when Michael drinks David’s blood, his face is superimposed upon that of The Doors’ Jim Morrison, who observes the proceedings from a giant poster (Jason Patrie is a dead ringer for Morrison). Presumably the point here is that now in his vam-pire-ness, Michael shares the singer’s eternal youth. We soon weary though of the meandering, repetitive plot, the cinematic sound-and-light show, and what seem like 20 million zoom shots. It is at this point that the visuals of “The Lost Boys” threaten to run the film into the ground, but comic relief saves the movie from terminal hypertension. THE FROG BROTHERS, one of whom, Edgar, is played by “Stand By Me’”s Corey Feldman, come to the rescue of Sam and Michael. Feldman plays his role in dead-pan style, which is funny in itself, cops a canteen of holy water from a local church, mixes it with pounds of garlic cloves and thus prepares an enormous supply of vampire repellant. The final 30 minutes of “The Lost Boys” are non-stop visual pyrotechnics, aural assaults and special effect after effect (masterminded by Eric Brevig), and that’s about it. But none of this stuff is enough to keep us from seeking peaceful slumber in coffins of our own. “The Lost Boys” opens Friday at Ashley Square Twin Cinemas in Greencastle.

manager with a gambling habit. Herman had continued to rent from the man who bought it but was nearly evicted in August after falling behind. Fans and celebrity friends such as Frank Sinatra and Clint Eastwood raised more than $70,000 toward the tax debt and back rent, organizing an all-star benefit in his honor Oct. 23 that drew musicians, singers, comedians and other celebrities. “I’m glad that he doesn’t have to suffer anymore and that he lived long enough to see that people really cared for him,” said “Tonight” show orchestra leader Doc Severinsen. Herman played an average of 27 halls and ballrooms a month into his 70s, saying he loved the music and needed the money. He last performed in March. “The band stays young,” he once said. “It’s just the coach that got very old.”

ELECTION DAY!

Sunday L. ’ 3 26 52 Monday It • Acts ? 76 76-40 6 70-20 j®||| ’ 4 ■ F IX O. ’V* Wednesday • 7 Thessalonians Thursday • 2 Timothy ■ 2 ’-’ 3 Fnday • Hebrews 4:1 ’ 13 Saturday • James ul Election Day! What a day, and privilege. It is that sacred moment, standing alone in the voting booth, when you as an American exercises a most precious privilege. You are insuring that "government by the people, of the people, and for the people” shall not pass from this land. The responsibility is as awesome as the privilege is sacred. Because, as someone put it, “Bad people are often elected by good people who don't vote." jml The Apostle Paul. Christian to the core, was extremely S ‘ •" proud of his Roman citizenship Said he: lam a citizen of no mean city " (Acts 21:39) Later he would use his Roman '*« citizenship for protection. (Acts 22:25) Illj When the Res Dr. Dwight 1... Moods was chided for his | involvement in politics he declared. "I am a citizen of two MMSbB BaMI worlds. Ms home is heaven, lint 1 vote m Cook Counts. And God, speaking through his preacher Jeremiah, re- MH minded the people: "Seek you the welfare of the city where I have sent you. . . and pray to the I»rd on its behalf, for in its ■ Ja LX ■ welfare you will find your welfare. (Jeremiah 29:7) Vote this election day, November 3. scriptures selected t>y n» American bm society Copyright 1987 Keister-Williams Newspaper Services. P O. Box BOOS, ChartottesviHe VA 22906

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