You know The Lost Boys was shot partly in Santa Cruz, right? And the fictional town of Santa Carla, with that beach boardwalk and those sexy teenage vampires? Yep, Santa Cruz, except with vampires. Today, in honor of the 25th anniversary of the film's release, The Atlantic gives us an academic, cultural anthropological analysis of The Lost Boys, paying special attention to "the embodiment of a specific type of single Boomer mother" that is Lucy, played by the great Dianne Wiest.

Critic Jeff Roda discusses Wiest's character as a microcosm for the divorced, self-involved parents of Generation X's "latchkey kids," and he sees Joel Schumacher's 1987 film as sort of allegory about these detached parents, and what happens to the kids when they're left to their own devices. They become vampires, and fall in with the wrong crowd, and could end up dead! He writes that Lucy is a woman "who mistakes passivity and willful victimization — the refusal to fight for her sons’ security — for an off-brand of free-spirited rebellion against the prevailing shift towards materialism. In short, Lucy is a fearful narcissist masquerading as a spiritually evolved human being." He's referring to the strange explanation at the beginning of the movie for why she somehow neglected to get child support in her divorce and had to move back in with her kooky father (played by the brilliant, late character actor Barnard Hughes) in Santa Carla in the first place.

We mostly like the movie because it reminds us how electric Kiefer Sutherland used to be on screen before he became an alcoholic television actor. And how hot Jamie Gertz and Jason Patric were in their prime. (Actually, Jason Patric has aged quite well, but we digress.)

More importantly, though, it featured not one but both of the Coreys. While Feldmen gets to play one of the self-proclaimed vampire hunters, it's Haim who walks away with the picture. As noted, "Haim single-handedly keeps the show going here, especially when it devolves into standard garlic-necklace and holy water fare, and he’s reason alone to revisit the picture."

If you're part of that generation for whom this film seems really historic, might we suggest a few others that, in our eyes, have stood up well despite the quarter century that has passed since their release. It truly was the golden age of teen cinema. See some clips below.

Weird Science (1985)

Lucas (1986)

Stand By Me (1986)

Heathers (1988)

Pretty In Pink (1986)

[The Atlantic]

During a harrowing incident in San Leandro on Tuesday night, a woman driving with her mother became stuck on the train tracks after mistakenly assuming the tracks were a street. With an oncoming train heading their way, the daughter quickly jumped out of the vehicle. Attempts to pull her mother out of the car, however, proved futile. The train collided with the car and killed 56-year-old Pei Chuan Haung.

"The daughter was driving east on Williams Street when she made a right turn onto the tracks that parallel San Leandro Boulevard" reports The Chronicle. "It was raining at the time, and the woman apparently thought she was turning onto a street."

The train rammed the car, pushing it about a quarter-mile until it came to a stop south of Castro Street, near San Leandro Boulevard. The Daily Review notes, "Alameda County firefighters and officers from San Leandro and Union Pacific police discovered the woman had been ejected from her vehicle."

No one else was injured during the incident.

According to a recent article in the New York Times Magazine, women are jumping on the apparently white-hot trend of aborting one healthy fetus in a twin pregnancy. Why? Because some of them only want or can only afford one child. One mother in particular, "Jenny," was pregnant with twins at the age of 45 due in large part to in vitro fertilization. However, she only yearned for one, so she turned the duo into a solo act. NYT Magazine, via Mommy Files, has her story:

"Things would have been different if we were 15 years younger or if we hadn't had children already or if we were more financially secure," Jenny told the Times. "If I had conceived these twins naturally, I wouldn't have reduced this pregnancy, because you feel like if there's a natural order, then you don't want to disturb it. But we created this child in such an artificial manner -- in a test tube, choosing an egg donor, having the embryo placed in me -- and somehow, making a decision about how many to carry seemed to be just another choice. The pregnancy was all so consumerish to begin with, and this became yet another thing we could control."

Although such pregnancy reductions with twins are comparatively rare, The Mommy Files notes that "hospitals are reporting increasing numbers." A very slight increase, that is. As a twin, we were personally curious about this decision. How does one decide which one goes, we wondered. In an effort to find out more, we spoke with San Francisco's Planned Parenthood.

"Are you seeing an upswing in twin reduction procedures?" we asked.

"Hmm. Well, we can't discuss any of that information, unfortunately," the lady at Planned Parenthood explained.

Drats.

Looking to investigate this alleged trend further, we called our own mother to ask her if, given the choice, whom would she have aborted back in the 1970s: your SFist editor or his sister. This was not the sharpest move. Here's how our conversation went. Ahem:

SFist: Hi. Quick question for you. Apparently, women are now deciding to abort one fetus in their twin pregnancy. While you were pregnant with us, and if you had to choose due to financial circumstances or whatnot, whom would you have had eliminated: me or Sarah?

Mom: What?

SFist: Like, OK, you know how you already have an older son, older than me. Well, given your druthers, would you have opted to eliminate the male fetus or the female fetus? If you had wanted to, that is. I'm thinking it would've been me, right?

Mom: Why would you even think of asking me something like this?

SFist: This is going to be on SFist, by the way.

Mom: Brock, I'm hanging up now. Bye. [click]

Well then.

Anna Madrigal, fictitious maternal figure to all San Franciscans, asks, "Have you called your mother today?"