Editorials
Looking Back on the Two ‘Lost Boys’ Sequels That Time Forgot
The Lost Boys wasn’t just a massive box office success, it was also a game-changer in vampire media, making the undead hip again and convincing a whole generation that they too could become juvenile vampire hunters (though I know a lot of people who wouldn’t mind joining Kiefer Sutherland’s punk-rock group of dreamy Nosferatu).
And as is often in the case in Hollywood, the film’s near-instant popularity meant that the studio was immediately interested in a follow-up, with director Joel Schumacher even coming up with a pitch titled “The Lost Girls” meant to follow a different tribe of female vampires. Of course, we all know that this project never materialized, and fans were forever left to wonder about what a proper Lost Boys sequel might look like. Or were they?
What a lot of horror fans don’t realize is that we actually did get not just one but two Lost Boys sequels over 20 years after the original – only these flicks would be direct-to-video B-movies that ended up drawing the ire of the handful of critics who dared to review them. However, having revisited these movies back-to-back, I can attest that they’re definitely not the unwatchable trash that their 0% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes would have you believe.
This is precisely why I’d like to take this opportunity to look back on the Lost Boys sequels that time forgot and dive into why I think they deserve a second chance.
There were actually quite a few attempts at reviving The Lost Boys after the studio rejected Schumacher’s gender-flipped sequel pitch. Throughout the ’90s, the director would try and get several different spin-offs off the ground until finally giving up in the 2000s, when he explained that there was no point in doing a direct follow-up since all the main characters are either dead or have moved on.
Not exactly what fans were clamoring for.
Later on, the successful DVD release of the original film also sparked interest in a comeback, with much of the original cast willing to reprise their roles in a new film. This project also wouldn’t get off the ground as Warner Bros was already considering a full-on remake at that point – a film that ultimately wouldn’t be funded due to a perceived lack of interest in vampire media by the younger demographic.
It was only after the mid-2000s Twilight craze that the studio realized there was still money to be made from undead bloodsuckers, so they decided to give the sequel another chance. Having stumbled upon a spec script titled The Tribe – which followed the exploits of a pack of surfing werewolves and was already heavily influenced by The Lost Boys – Warner asked screenwriter Hans Rodionoff to rework his screenplay into an official sequel that turned the surfers into a new group of seductive vampires.
With From Dusk Till Dawn 3 director P. J. Pesce being chosen to helm the picture on a reduced budget, The Lost Boys: The Tribe would be released in 2008 and followed Chris and Emma Emerson (Tad Hilgenbrink and Autumn Reeser) who relocate to Luna Bay, California after the death of their mother. Unfortunately, the grieving siblings soon find themselves being targeted by a local tribe of surfing vampires led by Shane Powers (Angus Sutherland), with only an aging Edgar Frog (Corey Feldman) willing to help them.
While The Tribe is by no means a masterpiece, showcasing TV quality production value and underwritten (not to mention underperformed) characters, it’s not nearly as bad as critics would have you believe. In fact, the flick’s biggest flaw can’t even be blamed on the filmmakers, as the original movie holds up largely because of how it captured the spirit of its then-contemporary late ’80s setting, an advantage that The Tribe can’t really compete with (though I appreciate how the film features a couple of vampires playing Gears of War on an X-Box 360).
That being said, there’s still plenty of fun to be had here if you’re willing to avoid constantly comparing the film to the original. For starters, I actually enjoyed many of the movie’s attempts at humor, with the story featuring some memorable recurring gags like the vampire bros who repeatedly injure themselves on camera for fun, as well as a handful of silly one-liners by Feldman (with “who ordered the stake?” being my personal favorite).
Return of the King!
The Tribe is honestly at its best when Feldman gets to let loose as a slightly more pathetic version of Edgar Frog, complete with his overly-macho voice and an implied tragic backstory concerning Sam Emerson (with Corey Haim actually having a cameo here) and Alan Frog (who only appears in a deleted scene). Plus, we even get a brief appearance of effects legend Tom Savini to establish the new vampires as a legitimate threat.
Despite the surprisingly savage critical reaction, The Tribe thoroughly impressed Warner Bros with its sales numbers, leading the studio to greenlight another sequel immediately. Directed by Dario Piana, the next film would double down on the comedic elements of its predecessor, with screenwriters Rodionoff and Evan Charnov cutting out the middleman and making the most interesting character the protagonist this time around.
While Corey Haim was unable to return due to his struggles with substance abuse (which tragically led to his death by the time the movie came out), Jamison Newlander makes a brief comeback as a vampirized Alan Frog, with the lead characters of the previous film being ditched so that the flick might appeal to folks who didn’t enjoy The Tribe.
In the finished film, titled The Lost Boys: The Thirst, we follow Edgar Frog (Feldman) as he’s recruited by Stephanie Meyer stand-in Gwen Lieber (Tanit Phoenix) to rescue her younger brother from yet another group of party-loving vampires led by a mysterious alpha. Naturally, plenty of bloody mayhem ensues as Edgar and his new crew discover the truth behind these vampiric ravers.
Right off the bat, the threequel improves on its predecessor by refusing to rehash the original and instead focusing on action and humor in a completely new story. It’s still rather janky, with the vampires being even less charismatic than in The Tribe, but I appreciate how the flick leans into its cheesy influences. Hell, the script even pokes fun at the Twilight phenomena which led to the resurgence of the Lost Boys franchise in the first place, with Frog’s criticism of sexy vamps being especially hilarious when you remember that Kiefer Sutherland’s David was the original undead teenage heartthrob.
Kind of looks like a cheap Nine Inch Nails music video.
It’s really this emphasis on humor that makes The Thirst stand out, with the film going so far as to enhance its over-the-top wirework fight scenes with even more absurd one-liners (turning Holy Water into Holy Slaughter!) as well as genuinely charming character moments like Edgar and his friend Zoe meeting for pancakes while still being covered in the blood of a defeated vampire.
Sure, a lot of the dialogue feels awkward and the action could have used a larger effects budget to avoid looking like a CW show, but The Thirst ultimately provides enough charm to make up for these failings. I’m especially surprised at how nuanced they managed to make Feldman’s character here, with his man-child antics contrasting perfectly with the franchise’s recurring themes about youth and the acceptance of death.
Like the previous film, The Thirst ends on a cliffhanger teasing another sequel, but it’s pretty clear at this point that any future Lost Boys project likely won’t acknowledge this pair of wacky movies. Whether or not that’s a good thing I can’t say for sure, but I do think that both these sequels deserved a better reputation.
While neither of the films come close to matching the quality of the original Lost Boys, as far as cheesy vampire flicks go, you could do a lot worse than revisiting The Tribe and The Thirst. That’s why I heartily recommend both of these flicks to fans of schlocky vampire stake ‘em ups.
Of the three films that make up the Diabolical Trinity of classic religious horror films—Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), and The Omen (1976)—The Omen is the most purely entertaining.
While Rosemary’s Baby digs into the societal shifts of the 60s and The Exorcist explores spiritual tensions between faith and doubt in an ever-shifting world, The Omen seems most interested in just telling a thrilling story. It achieves this by blending two major trends of the 1970s, the devil movie and the paranoid thriller, into one crackling adventure yarn. In the process, The Omen has sparked fear and curiosity about what could happen in the “end times” if such events are to occur.
After seeing The Exorcist, producer Harvey Bernhard contacted writer David Seltzer and said something along the lines of, “Hey, write me one of those.” Seltzer, having never read the Bible, thought it would be an interesting challenge, so, according to various interviews, he read the Bible and several commentaries in search of a story. Then he stumbled upon a passage in the book of Revelation, the image of a great Beast rising out of the sea, that sparked his imagination. In the commentaries, he found that the sea represented politics in some interpretations of the text, and he began building his story on that foundation.
Seltzer has told this story often, and I am inclined to believe him. However, from there, much of the theological-sounding lore of The Omen was created purely by Seltzer. Many of the ideas surrounding The Antichrist in the film appear to be drawn much more from the pop-eschatology sensation of the 1970s, The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay, than any Biblical source.
Lindsay’s book was the bestselling nonfiction book of the 1970s and re-popularized views of the “last days” that had been dying along with fundamentalism for decades, namely Dispensationalism, Millennialism, and the Pre-Tribulation Rapture. In dispensationalism, history is broken into several epochs of time (or dispensations) that culminate in the return of Christ and his thousand-year (millennial) reign.
Before this return, a seven-year Tribulation will occur in which the Antichrist comes to power and persecutes all who oppose him, culminating in a battle between the forces of good and evil at the valley of Megiddo, usually called Armageddon. Of course, in this worldview, the true believers in Jesus will be lifted out, or raptured, before all this takes place. Since the publication and popularity of The Late Great Planet Earth, this has been the prominent belief in Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christian circles, though Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline Protestant denominations largely reject it.
Lindsay also did something unique that had not been the case even in dispensationalist circles before him—he posited that the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948 started the countdown to Armageddon. Fans of the film will immediately realize where Seltzer ran with this idea in the first line of the poem created for the movie: “When the Jews return to Zion…”
Damien Thorn and the Creation of Horror’s “Innocent Villain”
Seltzer’s next inspiration focused on the idea of the Antichrist as a child, what he would call the film’s “innocent villain.” In watching The Omen, it is readily apparent that Damien Thorn (Harvey Stephens) does not really do anything evil beyond a bit of normal kid mischief. Even the moment in which Damien knocks Kathy Thorn (Lee Remick) over a second-floor railing can be read as an accident orchestrated by Damien’s diabolically connected nanny, Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw). The film takes this idea of the innocent villain a step further by casting Gregory Peck, best known for playing arguably the greatest father in film history, Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), as Damien’s earthly father, an element that greatly satisfied Seltzer.
The New Testament itself says very little about the Antichrist and certainly nothing about his childhood. In fact, the word antichrist is used twice (1 John 2:18 and 2 John 7 for the curious) and refers to groups of people, not a particular person. There is also a passage in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 in which the writer (usually attributed to Paul) discusses “The Man of Lawlessness” who will “exalt himself over everything that is called God” and “proclaim himself to be God.”
Then there is the Beast of Revelation chapter 13 with “seven heads and ten horns” that Seltzer latched onto, which has been interpreted in a multitude of ways over the centuries. Powerful people throughout history, from Charlemagne, various Popes during the Protestant Reformation era, Napoleon and Hitler, to modern politicians, including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, have all had the label placed on them by various circles. Even religious leaders like Billy Graham have not escaped being called the Antichrist.
Lindsay and modern dispensationalists are certain the Antichrist will be a 21st-century individual as they are equally certain that the Rapture, Tribulation, and return of Christ are imminent, likely within their lifetime. Many scholars and theologians, however, interpret these passages as symbolic representations of the Roman Empire and the first-century Caesars who persecuted, tortured, and murdered Christians and Jews who refused to submit to Imperial rule and worship them as gods. For example, that the Beast from the sea in Revelation has seven heads is symbolic of the famous seven mountains of Rome, with the 10 horns referring to rulers and magistrates of the Empire.
But this is all really of no matter to Seltzer and the story of The Omen. Instead of being concerned with any historical or theological accuracy, he instead built his own lore, which sends Robert Thorn and photographer Keith Jennings (David Warner) on a globetrotting investigation into the nature of the Antichrist and how to stop him. Some of this lore includes the child being born of a jackal, the reaction of animals, the protective cult that arises around Damien, the daggers of Megiddo, and maybe most interesting of all, the peculiar flaws in Jennings’s photographs that presage the ways certain individuals will die.
All these aspects are where the paranoid thrillers come in, as films like Blow Up (1966), Z (1969), The Conversation (1974), The Parallax View (1974), 3 Days of the Condor (1975), and All the President’s Men (1976) were all the rage at the time. Especially in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the idea of journalists (like Jennings) as ordinary heroes who could bring down the powerful, nefarious forces in the world was exactly what audiences craved. And what greater hidden evil force was there than the Devil? This is also why the device of the daggers of Megiddo is so important to a movie like this. If Damien is indeed the Antichrist, there must be a way to stop him, though in the Biblical text, the only power capable of destroying the Devil is God Himself.
The Mark of the Beast, 666, and the Film’s Most Famous Religious Symbolism
The piece of lore created for the movie with the most solid Biblical grounding is the Mark of the Beast. Revelation describes a mark on the forehead or hand of those who worship the Beast and his image. Again, this is symbolic language differentiating those who belong to the power of the Roman Empire and those who belong to Christ, who have the Mark of the Lamb. In Seltzer’s hands, the mark is very literal, a birthmark that is borne by not only the Antichrist but all his followers, meaning they are marked from before birth as belonging to Satan, and there is no escaping it. This is all rather distressing to the priest Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton), who betrays his mark by warning Thorn about Damien and pays the price by memorably being impaled by a spire that falls from a church steeple after being struck by lightning.
Why is the mark three sixes? Again, this is drawn from a passage in Revelation that states that the Beast can be identified by calculating his number. In Biblical scholarship, this is believed to be the sum of the name of a man transferred into Hebrew numerology, a practice in which each Hebrew letter also represents a number. Using this method, the number of the name Caesar Nero, which many believe to be the most logical choice, is six hundred sixty-six. In the film and elsewhere, this number is changed to three individual sixes. According to the film, this represents the Diabolical Trinity (a designation also unique to the film) made up of Satan, the Antichrist, and the False Prophet. That Damien carries this unique birthmark under his hair convinces Robert that the child is the Antichrist, and it’s up to him to destroy him.
Part of what makes The Omen great is its ambiguity. Damien could be the Antichrist, or he could be at the center of a series of coincidences. Director Richard Donner stated in interviews that he believed Robert Thorn had gone insane by the end of the film, which, to Donner, is the only explanation for why Thorn would attempt to kill an innocent child. However, that enigmatic smile in the final shot suggests that Damien does embody a spirit of great evil. The sequels, however, all but erase this ambiguity.
In audiences, The Omen sparked a renewed interest in the concept of the Antichrist and the dispensationalist interpretation of the end times that continues to echo throughout the last five decades. Around the time of the film’s release, even Elvis Presley was photographed brandishing a paperback copy of Seltzer’s novelization. Dispensationalist authors like Hal Lindsay, Tim LaHaye, and John Hagee have made millions publishing books and giving lectures about the Antichrist and the end of the world.
The Legacy of The Omen, 50 Years Later
Though A Thief in the Night (1972) preceded The Omen in initial release, it gained quite a resurgence (along with the ability to create three sequels) in the wake of the popularity of The Omen and went on to scar the psyches of Evangelical children for decades. Hal Lindsay was also able to release a film version of The Late Great Planet Earth in 1978, complete with narration and a brief onscreen appearance from Orson Welles.
In the 1990s, the Left Behind series became a cultural phenomenon, spawning twelve books in the core series, a YA spinoff series, video games, and a movie series (2000-2005) starring Kirk Cameron. A bigger studio adaptation of the first book was released in 2014, starring Nicolas Cage. 20th Century Fox and The Omen got in on the renewed “end-of-the-world” vigor by releasing a remake of the original film on June 6, 2006. The franchise was revived once again in 2024 with The First Omen, which explores ideas of the Antichrist and the motivations of those in power in our current religious, social, and political context.
But despite all the sequels, spinoffs, rip-offs, remakes, and “end times” money grabs of the last 50 years, the original version of The Omen remains untouchable. Its greatest strength is that it seeks, first and foremost, to entertain. And it does so admirably.
After half a century, its influence can be felt in horror, the culture at large, and even in various faith circles. It is a testament to the power of story and film that, consciously or unconsciously, fans of The Omen and those who have never seen it alike are, to this very day, marked by the Beast.
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