Kiefer Sutherland discusses head-eating gore effect cut from The Lost Boys

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Fans of the 1987 vampire flick THE LOST BOYS probably remember a scene in which the titular bloodsuckers attack a group of people partying beside a bonfire. During the attack, the lead Lost Boy David (played by Kiefer Sutherland) grabs a bald guy and sinks his teeth into the back of the guy's head, resulting in a large spray of blood. It's a cool shot, but as it turns out there was supposed to be a lot more to that head-snacking moment, and it's a shame that the gore effect didn't make it into the finished film because Sutherland was excited about it.

Speaking with Yahoo! more than thirty years after working on THE LOST BOYS, Sutherland reminisced about 

a scene that actually didn't make the movie that I was really, really excited about, mainly because it was just so violent I couldn't believe that we were doing it. It's sort of in the movie — they cut around it — but there was a guy on a beach and he was bald and they had made a prosthetic cast of his head. And the part of the scene that I loved the most was literally, it was like a cake: I ate the whole back of his head off and blood just went everywhere. I had been directed to just smile like a child having cake, and the two images were so frightening and scary."

Sutherland also revealed that his "mulleted Billy Idol" look in the film came about only after he was appalled to find that dying his long hair white made him "look like a wrestler." So, without director Joel Schumacher's permission, he asked the on-set hair stylist to crop the top of his hair in a way inspired by Billy Idol. When Schumacher saw the cut, he "wasn't thrilled." 

The beach attack sequence from THE LOST BOYS, with the head bite that isn't nearly as gory as originally intended, can be seen below. 

Copies of the THE LOST BOYS can be purchased on Amazon.