10 Horror Movie Franchises That Wasted Their Perfect Ending

"One thing about living in Santa Clara I never could stomach... all the damn vampires."

With that line, Joel Schumacher's The Lost Boys ends with a fantastic chuckle as the bewildered, bloody faces of Lucy Emerson and her sons Michael and Sam look on, and then Echo & the Bunnymen's version of The Doors' People Are Strange starts to play.

This 1987 feature is a major favourite of many, and the above quote from Lucy's elderly father - revealing that he'd neglected to tell them about the vampiric troubles of his hometown - perfectly brought an end to the action.

Despite plentiful speculation over the years that audiences may get a Lost Boys sequel, it looked for the longest time that this property would be a one-and-done affair. Then, 2008 brought us Lost Boys: The Tribe and 2010 served up Lost Boys: The Thirst - and even the biggest fans of the original film had to painfully admit that both of these sequels absolutely sucked.

If The Lost Boys was all that we knew, we'd solely have grin-inducing memories of insta-quotable dialogue, impressive SFX work, big hair, classic '80s fashion, and an utterly iconic soundtrack. While we do still have those memories, they have been somewhat tarnished by the two follow-ups which arrived so many years after the first movie's '87 release.