If you were of a certain age (approximately 11 to 21) in the year 1987, there’s a pretty good chance that you’re a fan of ‘The Lost Boys‘, a strange horror comedy that featured Kiefer Sutherland, both Coreys and Julia Roberts’ future ex-husband, as well as the effervescent Jami Gertz at her most hair-poofy. It provided the soundtrack for most of my ’88 and ’89, as well as some truly memorable cinema moments (including a life-long crush on Dianne Wiest) but mostly it took the existing tropes and story-beats of old-school monster movies and remixed them for the Clinton years. It’s interesting to see the old clichés (beat the head vampire and all others fall down; holy water, garlic and stakes; the mysterious underground lair) trotted out and mostly played straight, leaving me with an appreciation of how even silly or dated ideas can work if you commit to them, which leads us to today’s “Say hello to the night” query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) also has a deep and abiding love for ‘Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein’, but not ‘Abbott & Costello Meet The Mummy’, ’cause the Mummy sucks, asking: What’s your favorite updated use of legendary monsters in modern stories ala ‘The Lost Boys?’
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer, particularly in Season 2. There were episodes updating mummies, werewolves, the invisible man, bride of Frankenstein, and even the creature from the Black Lagoon, among others.
Shin Godzilla is excellent.