herbiehancock

No 438 - The Lost Boys Director - Joel Schumacher I find vampires fascinating. There are so many different ways to tell the story, from the sublime to the ridiculous . I love that there are so many ways to tell the story, that although there are similarities, no two vampire films are alike with different powers and different weaknesses. In this list we'll look at a number of very different Vampires ranging from the ethereal beauty of Anne Rice's vampires to the brutish Monsters at the Titty Twister. We begin with Lost Boys, looking at Vampires as 80's heart throbs and icons. Where the key word is 80's. It seems that in order to become a vampire at Santa Carla you have to have the most atrocious mullet - but not only that, it seems that this entire film is a celebration of the 80s, with a fantastic cast - including the Coreys - both Haim and Feldman and with none other than Bill S Preston esq (I never knew Alex Winter did anything outside of Bill and Ted), and a...

No 70 - Stand by Me Director - Rob Reiner My first real experience with 'Stand by Me' was the song . I had to be the bass line for it in a Saturday morning choir (oh, my youth captured all the dizzy heights of excitement!) and therefore spent many a moment going " doo doo bum bum doo doo bum bum". I had read the book though and as soon as I turned the DVD on I could see some familiar Stephen King traits. King loves the 50s and there have been several stories which use the 'flashback' technique in order to tell a story from an earlier decade. I think his fascination seems to stem from the 'oldies' - music from the 50s - and the romanticised violence of gangs in the 50s. The film is very similar (visually and stylistically) to It - following the same idea of a group of young 'losers' on a mission whilst being pursued by a gang of older youths. There are other similarities to It which I'm not going to go into detail about, but both stori...