The Lost Boys: Santa Carla in Santa Cruz

In the film, the Emersons move to the seaside town of Santa Carla, and the funfair at its heart is the real Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. It is where Michael first sees Star, and the 1911 carousel is the ride the gang is barred from at the start of the film. Santa Carla is, in one guide's words, "unmistakably Santa Cruz". Filming ran for 21 days, from 2 to 23 June 1986. Today the Boardwalk at 400 Beach Street is still a working seafront funfair, with its 1911 carousel.

Visitor guidance: Open as a funfair at 400 Beach Street; the 1911 carousel is still there.

The wooden roller coaster dominating the eastern end of the Boardwalk is the Giant Dipper, and it is the skyline of Santa Carla. It shows up in the swooping aerial shots of the Boardwalk that the film uses to set the scene. The coaster was named a National Historic Landmark on 27 February 1987, the same year the film came out. Guidebooks warn that the queue can be long, so ride it in daylight, away from the vampires.

Visitor guidance: Rides run at the Boardwalk; expect a queue in season.

Lucy takes a job at a video store run by Max, the smooth shopkeeper who starts dating her. The shop was on the Santa Cruz Wharf, built in 1914 and still the place for fishing, sea lions and dinner. Today the store is a gift shop, the Santa Cruz Bay Company at 17D Municipal Wharf. A restaurant further along the pier also appears in the film, and Max's date with Lucy is the dinner interrupted by a call from Sam. Nobody suspects the nice shopkeeper is the head vampire.

Visitor guidance: Walk out along the wharf from Beach Street; the former store is at 17D.

David's gang takes Michael to a railway bridge, where they hang over a vast drop and let go one by one into the fog. The scene is a mix of places. Introductory shots were filmed in a valley in Santa Clarita near Magic Mountain, and part of the bridge was recreated in a studio for the dangling. The trestle crosses the Santa Clara River and is now part of a park and biking trail near the Iron Horse Trailhead.

Location precision: The bridge is a Santa Clarita location, far from Santa Cruz; the pin marks the Iron Horse Trailhead near it.

The gang's hideout is a former luxury hotel buried by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, where David tricks Michael into drinking a bottle of what turns out to be blood. The grand lobby was a set built on Stage 12 of the Warner Bros. lot, but the entrance is real: a sea cave on a cliffside on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles County, by Terranea Beach. If you go, remember it is a sea cave, and be aware of the tides.

Location precision: The cave entrance is on the headland by Terranea Beach; the pin marks the nearby Terranea Resort.

Michael and Sam move in with their eccentric Grandpa, and it is here that the film ends. The Emersons' house is the Pogonip Clubhouse in the Pogonip open space preserve in the Santa Cruz Mountains, a rustic building. The finale was a fight against the gang, who break in, and in the last scene Grandpa drives his truck through the wall and impales Max with a wooden fence post. The interior was recreated on Stage 15 for filming, and the clubhouse looks unused today.

Location precision: The pin marks the Pogonip preserve; the clubhouse itself sits somewhere inside it.