Lord of the Flies

May I start by saying a pox on those who do not love the cast.

I honestly can't see why you complain. I love the book; I didn't need to read it for school, but I read it anyway and enjoyed it. I understood the message Golding brought about. Then why am I not offended by this movie as I was by Lord of the Rings?

This film is an excellent translation of Golding's novel. It is stark, bold and well directed. The young cast are frighteningly talented, especially Chapin and Edwards. This has everything I expected and much more. Perhaps I was wishing for a more vivid "Lord of the Flies" scene, but it brought it's message across and kept everything in the book alive. I marvel every time I see Edwards' Piggy. I can't understand the capacity the boy had at such an age. Jack was well portrayed also, as was Ralph.

The ending was perfect. I admit the music did throw me off a tad but everything else just came so willingly. The emotions of the boys practically leaked out through to me, and that one little boy in particular (I've forgotten his name, I'm afraid - is it Percy?) looking up at the sea-captain just personified everything that the ending symbolised. This film is one of my favourites and I cannot see how anyone could fault it so drastically.

I agree with other reviewers that the acting is less than polished at times, but that just adds to the atmosphere and makes for a compelling picture. Peter Brook and the cast did a wonderful job making the first-time viewer really feel they were on a deserted island. Only being familiar with the title from literature references and not actually read William Golding's classic novel, I really couldn't wait to see how things were going to play out.

I understand that this was the first professional acting role for many of the boys featured in the movie. Maybe it's this fact and the fact it is in black and white that led others to write bad reviews but I enjoyed it and I think you will too!

I read the book when I was a kid, and I found it to be very disturbing. I didn't really care to think why.

Watching this movie as a grown up (especially as a grown up trying to think about anything BUT work) made me ponder several things about human behavior. For instance, what makes one person lead and another follow? Why is there almost always just 2 prominent sides to a situation, even though there are people involved whose opinions may be of varying shades of gray? Isn't it strange that once you commit an act of taboo, that it just makes it so much easier to do the next time? Why is an act that is morally reprehensible to perform individually, become so much easier when it is done in group? Where does one's individualism go when "mob rule" prevails ? I think the movie did a good job of bringing out the "beast", but it didn't surpass my initial impression from reading the book. The acting was commendable, given the age and experience of the actors, and the classic novel they were trying to portray. Ralph was just superb, trying to lead with "reason", but watching his leadership ebb to a much more terrifying alter ego. The relentlessness and inevitability of his fate was captured in all its horror when he is told "They're going to hurt you, Ralph".

Its hard to write a review about just the movie, when the story itself (as told in the book) is what makes the biggest impression. The movie is rich in metaphors - innocence lost, war, society in general, right and wrong, etc. In closing, I would recommend this movie to anyone looking for fear, but not of the sensational variety that 'horror movies' are generally associated with. Its a black and white movie, made in the 60's, and stars a bunch of scrawny kids. The fear is what you have to not watch - but live.

"Lord of the Flies", a piece of literature written by William Golding and originally published in 1954, is still a very famous novel, and is often studied in schools (many can say that's where they became familiar with it). Nearly a decade later, the first movie adaptation of the book saw the light of day. Adaptations of novels can be excellent, while others may generally be disappointing. This 1963 adaptation of William Golding's famous novel turned out to be sort of a mixed blessing.

A large group of English schoolboys find themselves stranded after a plane crash, without any surviving adults. Shortly after the crash, two of them meet for the first time. One of them is Ralph, and the other's real name remains unknown. The other boy tells Ralph about his undesired nickname, Piggy, and unfortunately, that is what he is called from then on. Ralph and Piggy don't see any other boys around, so Ralph uses a shell (or a conch) to call them. With all the boys gathered, Ralph is elected as the leader for the time they are stranded, and it is soon discovered that they are on an island. Ralph tries his best to keep the rest of the boys civilized, and tells them that a smoke signal must be kept going in order for them to be rescued. However, a rivalry soon begins between Ralph and the power-hungry Jack, and many boys end up on Jack's side, creating a group of savages!

The first thing you may be wondering about this movie is how faithful to the novel it is. Quite a bit of detail from the story was removed for this movie (which often happens with adaptations of novels), so if you've read the book, remembering some parts that you found really interesting, and you'd like to see how they're done in this movie, you may be disappointed to see that some of them are not included. However, apart from that, I would say the movie tells the original story very well, but it definitely has some other problems. The cinematography is pretty amateurish, and the cast is, well, not terrible, but not great. Personally, I found some of the movie dull, so I had trouble getting into it at times, but also found certain parts interesting or somewhat moving (though not as much so as I was expecting).

This "Lord of the Flies" adaptation definitely hasn't impressed every admirer of the book, which I can understand. I was a tad disappointed myself (certainly not as much as some people, but still a tad disappointed). However, many other admirers of William Golding's piece of literature like this movie. For fans of the book who haven't seen this movie, if you want an adaptation that is faithful to the book (despite the unsurprising fact that the story is shortened), and you can get over the shortcomings I've mentioned, I recommend this movie. You just might not want to expect a work of genius.

".......May I start by saying a pox on those who do not love the cast....The young cast are frighteningly talented" Thank You! Yes, the cast was talented in a non-professional way and that is perhaps what made the film work. But the real story of how the film was made is this: Off set was very much like on set. We lived in an abandoned pineapple warehouse and all called each other by our movie names. There was a split in the cast - sort of one "gang" against another - although in the real life one Jack and Ralph were on the same side (the leader of the other gang being one of the other choir boys). The gangs would make "war" on each other with Jack and Ralph's bunch headquartered out in the cane fields while the other bunch had a metal scaffold "fort" near the warehouse. In the beginning the cast was more of less evenly split but in the end I found I was on the "losing" side since we were down to only two people! So, filming was not all that difficult for the kids and much of it was simply letting us go at it. For instance the hut building scene was turned into a contest of who could build the best hut with a watermelon being the prize. That the cameras were going was only a secondary concern for the kids. Anyways, it was fun and make for some great childhood memories. Kent Fletcher (Percival), Corvallis OR USA