FIRST OFF . . .

Videocassettes of “The Lost Boys” have disappeared from the shelves of two Sauk Rapids-St. Cloud, Minn., area video stores. Store owners yanked tapes of the punk vampire yarn after local police linked it to a grisly murder last week. Three teen-agers--charged with the murder of a 30-year-old drifter--allegedly licked their victim’s blood off their hands (as did the movie’s characters) after they beat and stabbed him to death. Sheriff Dick Witschen said one of the teen-age suspects became interested in vampirism after repeatedly watching the video. Two of the seven video rental stores in the area have withdrawn the tape--one, Video Connection, because of complaints it received after coincidentally running a large newspaper ad promoting the tape on the same day the story of the murder was reported. However, the manager of Cloud Video, a rental store still stocking the tape, was skeptical about police allegations of a link: “I don’t see how the movie and the murder have anything to do with each other.” Some local video store owners said demand for the already popular rental had increased in the past week; others reported no change.