10 Movie Scenes That Will Give You Vertigo

This iconic scene shows Michael being initiated into the vampire gang after drinking from a bottle of blood. He is taken to a railroad bridge where one by one the boys drop off the side. Finding them all hanging from the bars under the bridge, he is finally pressured into tentatively joining them, as the foggy endless darkness stretches out below, hiding how deep the gorge reaches.

The scene triggers a vertigo reaction so successfully because you have no idea how far they are falling and any sense of confidence you have that Michael can hold on is removed when a train goes over the top of them, shaking the tracks while David yells at him to let go while the others disappear one by one. The fact that you can’t hear them land (because they are flying), also helps to disorient you as to how high they are.

Director Joel Shumacher discussed the scene in an interview in 2014, revealing that the bridge was in fact only around 15 feet high over a small gulley, and they achieved the effect of the boys falling from a great height by taking a piece of the bridge and suspending it over a sound stage filled with fog before dropping them into cardboard boxes with wires attached to them.

Interestingly, if you want to find the bridge, it is located on Google Maps in Santa Clarita, California, named ‘Lost Boys Bridge’!