…I first saw Corey in “The Lost Boys”. I don’t think I actually saw it in the theater, but we ended up with a recording of it (probably off HBO) on video tape, and I swear that things got watched to death. Looking back, I’m pretty sure I never saw a single film Corey did in the theater. As a teenager in the ’80s, the last thing I was going to tell my parents or friends was that I was going to a teen flick — because everybody knew that the main attraction of those movies was, well, Corey himself. I even remember trying to pretend not to be paying attention to “License to Drive” on an airplane because I was sitting next to my parents. Still, over the years, on video, I’ve probably seen a dozen or so of his movies, including three or four from the early-to-mid ’90s that were direct to video. The last time I remember him looking good was probably circa 1995 or ‘96, although according to various reports, his drug use had started long before that, in his mid-teens as he and movie and RL pal Corey Feldman lived the high life of teen stars in Hollywood. The rare shirtless pics of him (and later a couple of nude scenes on video) were fodder for my imagination.

I won’t go on about the senselessness of his death or the evils of drugs. We all have or issues and demons, some are just more destructive than others, and he’s not the first actor to be lost to them. I won’t tell you he was a great actor — he wasn’t. But he was gorgeous, charming, believable and always sorta had an “f*you” look stamped across his face that was a total turn on. Had he been able to keep his addictions under control, would he have had a successful career as an adult actor? Who knows?Very, very few child/teen stars make that transition. What I do know, is that he was an actor who provided me many, many hours of entertainment and countless hours of sighing — and although it’s been more than a decade since I’d really thought much about him, his death has provided a bitter-sweet trip down memory lane.