Always remember you, Corey Haim
I hate how so many people that I remember from the movies of my youth and coming-of-age are already dead. I just heard that we lost Corey Haim (same age as me) today. He, like that other Corey with whom he was often paired, had one of those long career declines as an actor that sadly started pretty much right after its teenage apex. Yeah, he had embarrassing personal problems that made tabloid news. He had the abortive attempts at career-reboot, even doing a reality show with Feldman. But I loved Corey Haim, and I will never ever forget the deep impression he made on me with his breakout role as Sam in the 1980's vampire classic The Lost Boys.
Way back before anyone that I knew personally considered the issue, and way before I understood much about myself, I took Corey Haim's character in that film to be gay. I do not know if this is generally accepted as "fact" nowadays, and haven't really heard anyone else talk about it. I didn't Google up any "research" on it either, because I figured I'd hit on a bunch of snark and stupid jokes which would anger me today. I don't know if Sam was gay, but that's the way I "read" the character when I saw the movie as a teenager, and I came away with that impression even while being still too naive to understand some of the indicators of it that the film now seems to be strewn with (stuff like the sexy Rob Lowe poster on Sam's closet door and some other set details like that). When I see Corey Haim as Sam, I see an actor who successfully played a teenage character who happens to be gay. Not a character where his gayness has anything particularly to do with what the story is about, but one who is incidentally gay. I have no idea if that was at all the intent, but it was the effect for me, and it's something that I don't think I have seen in any other horror genre film, and certainly not anything else from that era.
Way back before anyone that I knew personally considered the issue, and way before I understood much about myself, I took Corey Haim's character in that film to be gay. I do not know if this is generally accepted as "fact" nowadays, and haven't really heard anyone else talk about it. I didn't Google up any "research" on it either, because I figured I'd hit on a bunch of snark and stupid jokes which would anger me today. I don't know if Sam was gay, but that's the way I "read" the character when I saw the movie as a teenager, and I came away with that impression even while being still too naive to understand some of the indicators of it that the film now seems to be strewn with (stuff like the sexy Rob Lowe poster on Sam's closet door and some other set details like that). When I see Corey Haim as Sam, I see an actor who successfully played a teenage character who happens to be gay. Not a character where his gayness has anything particularly to do with what the story is about, but one who is incidentally gay. I have no idea if that was at all the intent, but it was the effect for me, and it's something that I don't think I have seen in any other horror genre film, and certainly not anything else from that era.