Max (The Lost Boys)

Max is the main villain of the 1987 vampire movie, The Lost Boys.

He was played by Edward Herrmann



The center of town life is the Boardwalk, which is plastered with flyers of missing people. While Lucy gets a job at a local video store run by a conservative man named Max, Michael becomes fascinated by Star, a beautiful young woman who lives with David, the mysterious leader of a local gang. Meanwhile, in the local comic book store, Sam meets brothers Edgar and Alan Frog, self-proclaimed vampire hunters who work at the store and give Sam horror comics to teach him about vampires.

When Michael meets Star the next night, David provokes him into a motorcycle race, in which he is baited into almost going over the edge of a sea cliff. David invites Michael to their lair, a once-luxurious hotel sunken by an earthquake, where he is put through an unsettling initiation that includes (unbeknowingly) drinking blood from an ornate wine bottle. He joins the gang in hanging from the underside of elevated train tracks, watching in horror as each willingly drops into a foggy gorge below. Unable to hold his grip any longer, Michael falls... waking up in his bed, groggy and disoriented.

Sam scoffs at the Frog brothers' focus on vampires, but with Lucy and Grandpa out on dates, Michael's developing vampirism start to become clear to Sam. First their house seems to be encircled by David and his gang on motorcycles (only for them to disappear when Michael opens the door). Next, while Sam takes a bath, his dog, Nanook, is forced to fend off Michael's bloodlust-driven attack on Sam. When Sam looks for his dog, he finds his brother has been attacked, but also that Michael's reflection in a mirror has become transparent. Sam calls the Frog brothers for help, but refuses their advice to kill Michael. When Lucy calls home, Sam begins to say that they need to speak about Michael, only for Michael, unable to control his new ability to fly, picks up the other line, refuting Sams suggestion, causing Sam to begin screaming. Lucy runs home. Sam lets Michael in through a window and they agree to work together to find answers. Lucy gets home, only for Sam to say he just got scared. Max goes home alone to hear strange noises and then his house similarly encircled by shouts and motorcycles. Michael visits Star to question her about the physical changes he is experiencing, and the two finally consummate their relationship. As he returns home in the morning, Lucy tries to speak with Michael about his unusual behaviour, as does Sam, but he goes to bed.

Lucy heads to apologise for Max for running out on him the night before, only for Thorn to savagely run her off of Max's premises. Sam turns to the Frog brothers again for advice and decides that his brother is only a half-vampire (having not yet killed anyone) who will turn back to human should the head vampire be killed. He turns their suspicions to Max. At a dinner party held by Lucy, Sam brings the Frog brothers and they put Max through a series of tests (including the use of garlic, holy water and mirrors), which appear to indicate that he is normal, greatly embarrassing Lucy. Grandpa watches this all suspiciously.

Michael looks for Star, confronting David. David takes Michael to attack a group of Surf Nazis at a bonfire, turning vampiric and entering a feeding frenzy. David announces to Michael that "you know what you are.... But you must feed". Michael returns home to speak to Sam, who asks who the head-vampire is. Star arrives and flies in through the window. Star reveals to Michael that she too is a half-vampire, and wants his help. It emerges that David had intended Michael to be Star's first kill, sealing her fate as a fully-fledged vampire.

The next day, a weakening Michael leads Sam and the Frog brothers to the gang's lair, where they intend to kill the vampires in their sleep. (The Frog brothers are stunned and terrified to discover that the vampires do not sleep in coffins, but hang from the ceiling like roosting bats.) The staking of one vampire (Marko) awakens David and the two others, and the boys barely escape with their lives, managing to rescue Star and Laddie, a recently abducted half-vampire child.

That evening, while Lucy is on a date with Max, and Grandpa is out of the house, the teens arm themselves with weapons based on traditional defenses against vampires. David and the gang attack, and are each killed in a spectacular fashion during the epic battle. Michael faces off with David, and ultimately impales him on a pair of mounted deer antlers. However, Michael, Star and Laddie do not transform back to normal with David's death, as they had hoped. Max and Lucy then return home, and Max is revealed to be the head vampire after all, at which point he informs them that to invite a vampire into one's house (as Michael sarcastically invited Max in for Lucy's dinner date) renders one powerless, which explains why Sam and the Frog brothers' tests failed to work on him. Max's objective all along was to get Lucy to be a "mother" for his "lost boys". But his grand plan is thwarted when Grandpa crashes his jeep through the wall of the house, impaling Max on the wooden fence posts he is carrying in the back of his jeep and causes him to explode in the fireplace.