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The Frog brothers--first launched as adolescent vampire slayers in
The Lost Boys, Joel Schumacher's 1987 fang-fest--have weathered a lot of undead incidents in the years since then. Or so we are told in
Lost Boys: The Thirst, a 2010 sequel that brings back original actors Corey Feldman and (less prominently) Jamison Newlander as Edgar and Alan Frog. The Frog boys are currently well out of the world of vampire hunting; Edgar, played by Feldman with all the growling crankiness he can muster, lives in a mobile home and peddles his vintage comic books to make ends meet.
The Thirst posits a new threat, a drug made of vampire blood that, distributed at raves, can enlist hundreds of new vampires in the bloodthirsty army in a single night. The author (Tanit Phoenix) of a
Twilight-like series of vampire novels has enlisted Edgar's help in stopping this menace, which gives Edgar (and the movie) a chance to rag on the
Twilight phenomenon a bit: "There is nothing sexy about being a member of the undead!" While the film is limited by its straight-to-DVD budget and slapdash action sequences, it does earn points for these pop-culture vampires pokes, reality TV-bashing, and
Lost Boys in-jokes. On the latter score, clips from the '87 film remind us of the past, including excerpts featuring the late Corey Haim, Feldman's frequent costar and something of a lost boy offscreen. This is a lightweight take on the material (when you hear a line like "this turns holy water into holy slaughter" you pretty much know what to expect), but as such things go it would have to be considered a savvy effort, and maybe the restart of a franchise.
--Robert Horton
