ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the youth-oriented horror films The Lost Boys (1987) and Queen of the Damned (2002) , which were released in the aftermath of socio-cultural crises relating to the control of youth culture in the USA. It argues that these crisis points are important because they would have inflected American audiences’ reception of these texts. Utilizing analysis of scenes from the films, the chapter illustrates that youth audiences in particular may have understood them, not just as vampire horror movies, but as texts that were indexical of rock and metal music culture as it was portrayed on MTV. The essay reveals these films’ use of MTV aesthetics, together with their representations of MTV and rock and metal culture, as significant because of the way that they cohered with wider anxieties about changing youth culture.
