Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7987 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-09-22
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Portuguese, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 86 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Harry Hook's adaptation is not as faithful to the William Golding novel as you'd wish (they excised the "Lord of the Flies" dialogue with Simon!) and because of it, the movie is less allegorical and less resonant. A group of young men from a military academy are stranded on an island. The group quickly becomes fractious with a passive section led by Ralph, trying to get rescued, and a hunter faction, led by Jack, trying to procure meat and "have fun." Peter Brook's 1963 filming seemed to get closer to the Darwinist sense of this cultural disintegration. Here, the hunter faction seems more like Peter Pan's Lost Boys than the bloodthirsty murderers they are. The performances, particularly young Getty, don't quite carry the weight of the situation. It's still, however, sobering to slowly watch the school uniforms traded for war paint, and the little boys turn into little savages. --Keith Simanton

Synopsis
Adapted from the William Golding novel. This Americanized 1990 version pits the young boys, survivors of a plane crash, against nature and eventually each other. The consensus that rules should be maintained in the wilderness is soon forgotten as one boy threatens the group's coexistence and even the very lives of the individuals when he begins to draw members into a separate group.

Customer Reviews

Lords it over many other films
I really enjoyed the book, but I can't recall many fine details of the plot which some people argue the film doesn't abide by. However, when I first watched this film the book was still fresh in my mind. I don't think this version of the film is as bad as other people make out. I thought the child actors were some of the best I've ever seen, and they made this film as brutal and shocking as the book was. The killing scenes are particularly gripping; I remember being quite alarmed in parts, and I'm not normally disturbed by things like that. In short, I think it's well worth a watch.

Awful
I have taught this novel for 8 years. This film's glaring error is to ignore and often to reverse the harrowing moral message of the original novel.

The original locates the capacity for evil within all of us and portrays civilization as a fragile surface beneath which lurks 'the darkness of man's heart'. Golding chose public schoolboys to be isolated on his island so the very 'pinnacle' of innocence and civilization was subverted when they turned to murder, sacrifice, and idolatry.

In this disastrous adaptation, there is a simplistic divide of the boys into 'good guys' who remain untainted by evil and 'bad guys' Moreover, the boys start as military cadets; when they turn to hunting it hardly surprises us. Jack, instead of changing from Head Chorister to The Chief of a tribe of savages, starts off as a delinquent and becomes...a delinquent. The character development is therefore omitted. The moral message becomes a conservative reinforcement of a good/evil division between people.

Golding would be mortified by this travesty of a film.

An Appalling Film of an Amazing Novel
This is the most disappointing transfer of book-to-film I have seen. Ever. After reading the classic novel at my school we watched the film, and after merely an hour the teacher switched off the tv as it was that bad. The film makers have taken the story line of the book and they have changed it so that it is ludicrously unbelievable, and they have taken the magnificent language of the book and replaced it with swearing. This film disgraces the powerful, moving novel it is based on, and if you were disappointed after watching this film, then do not let it put you off reading the book.