Rating: 
Summary: Average
Review: Nothing special about this cheaply made interpretation.
Rating: 
Summary: Spectacular
Review: Peter Brook is a genious and this film will never die. A bunchof kids evacuated from England during the Second World War regress tothe worst imaginable savage state. They recreate all evils. They recreate superstitions. They recreate killing as a way to cope with their fear of the night. They recreate killing for the sake of their own unity and their own belief in the possibility to survive. The blood of their victims becomes the rite of their sanity. Modern men cannot any more go back to any kind of primitive state without losing their culture, their civilisation, their humanity. They go back to animaldom. The most frightening element is that any one who speaks loud and strong is able to unify a pack of human animals behind him, on the basis of their frustration. It is a clear lesson about our society. We live with wolves among us. Economic wolves who are ready to devour us to increase their power and their fortune. Moral and political wolves who are ready to kill those that are considered as non-social to get popular support and votes. Even cultural wolves who are ready to destroy any sanity in order to become stars and gurus. Man is a sectarian animal. That is what this film tells us. And the coming of the British Navy to save those kids do not save anything because we suddenly discover that deep down the kids are just normal because they submit to this authority as soon as it arrives. And the whole nightmare is punctuated with religious music that is transformed into some war chant of death...Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Universities of Paris IX and II END
Rating: 
Summary: Splendid film and dvd!
Review: Peter Brook made the right decision to film this sweeping fictional story in black and white. It is starkly graphic in b=w somethng it couldn't ever be in color. The DVD has great extra features wth home movies and outtakes of the production of the film. I am astonished at how much of these valuable extras like these survived from a such low budget film. You may, however, be better off seeing these outtakes only after you see the '63 film itself so the illusion of reality to LOTF will remain intact throughout the viewing of it. Commentary by author William Golding is fine but the outtakes and home movies are the really great extras.
Rating:
Summary: WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US
Review: Peter Brooks' spartan adaptation of William Golding's immortal novel about a group of English schoolboys stranded on a desserted island still works nearly four decades after its initial release. Despite a total lack of star names and limited production values, the film succeeds thanks to yeoman performances from the child actors and an overall primitivism that makes the whole imminently believable. At first the castaways don't seem to have it so bad; there's plenty of food, no grownups, and no predators...except for perhaps one, a "beastie" that might be a weird animal or a ghost or something far worse...A moving, ever-poignant indictment of inherent human savagery, Lord of the Flies succeeds in translating the essence of Golding's tale to the screen. Like so many adults, the children think they're good enough to make their own utopia. So much for utopia. So much for childhood innocence.
Rating:
Summary: WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US
Review: Peter Brooks' spartan adaptation of William Golding's immortal novel about a group of English schoolboys stranded on a desserted island still works nearly four decades after its initial release. Despite a total lack of star names and limited production values, the film succeeds thanks to yeoman performances from the child actors and an overall primitivism that makes the whole imminently believable. At first the castaways don't seem to have it so bad; there's plenty of food, no grownups, and no predators...except for perhaps one, a "beastie" that might be a weird animal or a ghost or something far worse... A moving, ever-poignant indictment of inherent human savagery, Lord of the Flies succeeds in translating the essence of Golding's tale to the screen. Like so many adults, the children think they're good enough to make their own utopia. So much for utopia. So much for childhood innocence.
Rating:
Summary: Take a good look into the mirror and at your neighbors
Review: Read the book years ago. The movie does an excellent job of re-creating the authenticity of the book. We've been brought up to hide from our natures, only to make us even more so just beneath the surface. We see this brutal and honest film and want to think it's just a story, but it's not. It's raw and scary. It's probably too adult for the average viewer. We can't withstand that long, hard stare into the mirror. It's a gritty art film. This film was not meant to be an entertainment film but rather a think piece with a point. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Very bad adaptation.
Review: Some books should not be attempted as movies, this clearly is one of them. If you just watch the film instead of reading Golding's story, you'll be missing out on much of the wonderful symbolism, the character development and most bizarre of all, the actual Lord Of The Flies itself. It would seem logical that some of the more disturbing parts of the book would be minimized on screen but the amount of this story that was neglected to turn this tragic tale into a film is criminal, might as well be a different story. Not recommended at all.
Rating:
Summary: Peter Brook's 1963 version of William Golding's novel
Review: The 1963 version of "Lord of the Flies" was made on an island off of Puerto Rico by director Peter Brook with a cast made up on the sons of English parents that could be found on the island and in the United States. Only one of the children playing a major character, James Aubrey, who played Ralph, ever made another movie (although Nicholas Hammond, who played Robert, would have a real career in films and television). This becomes a key factor in the film because we are not dealing with child actors, which usually works for the film, but not always. But the more telling factor is that this film is only 92 minutes long, which meant some key elements from William Golding's celebrated novel are omitted. Ultimately, your feelings for this film are going to depend on your familiarity with the novel. Brooks creates an effective prologue consisting of a series of stills that set up the key elements of the situation: a boys school, a war, an evacuation, and a plane going down near enough to an island for a group of boys to survive. They find themselves on the island without any adults. Ralph (James Aubrey) argues that there have to be rules, while Jack (Tom Chapin), the leader of the choir (he can hit high C) thinks he should be in charge. If Ralph represents civilization while Jack is hearing the call of the wild, then it is Piggy (Hugh Edwards) who represents human intelligence. But in the inevitable shift in power that goes from Ralph to Jack as the children devolve into savages, it is Piggy who becomes the pivotal victim. What is sacrificed in the film are the two characters who occupy the next level of significance in the novel, Roger (Roger Elwin) and Simon (Tom Gaman), and while that choice is understandable it is what keeps this from being a great adaptation. Still, you cannot fault Brook for reducing the novel to the pivotal triad and the essence of Golding's novel is here if not the depth and rich symbolism. But even as we marvel at the performances that Brook coaxes from his young actors, and the cinematography by Tom Hollyman (who had been a still photographer before this film), we really do have to remember that it is 1963 and the idea of depicting the horrors of this novel on the screen was a risky endeavor. The fact that the novel is allegorical (i.e., Brooks is probably right in claiming on the basis of his filming experience that in the real world the boys would not have lasted a week) would not be enough to temper the reactions of audiences to little boys killing one another in the wild. This Criterion Collection edition has the usually goodies, although instead of a scholarly commentary track this time it consists of reminiscences by Brook, producer Lewis Allen, director of photography Tom Hollyman and cameraman/editor Gerald Feil. As such tracks go it is certainly above average, but I have to admit that I enjoy the academic approach usually found on Criterion's DVDs. There are also excerpts from the novel read by Golding that are interesting, although obviously not insightful (the excerpts are keyed to the same scenes in the movie). There is also a clip from Gerald Feil's documentary "The Empty Space" showing Brook's method of creating theater, a production scrapbook, outtakes, home movies, a deleted scene, and the original theatrical trailer
Rating:
Summary: Peter Brook's 1963 version of William Golding's novel
Review: The 1963 version of "Lord of the Flies" was made on an island off of Puerto Rico by director Peter Brook with a cast made up on the sons of English parents that could be found on the island and in the United States. Only one of the children playing a major character, James Aubrey, who played Ralph, ever made another movie (although Nicholas Hammond, who played Robert, would have a real career in films and television). This becomes a key factor in the film because we are not dealing with child actors, which usually works for the film, but not always. But the more telling factor is that this film is only 92 minutes long, which meant some key elements from William Golding's celebrated novel are omitted. Ultimately, your feelings for this film are going to depend on your familiarity with the novel. Brooks creates an effective prologue consisting of a series of stills that set up the key elements of the situation: a boys school, a war, an evacuation, and a plane going down near enough to an island for a group of boys to survive. They find themselves on the island without any adults. Ralph (James Aubrey) argues that there have to be rules, while Jack (Tom Chapin), the leader of the choir (he can hit high C) thinks he should be in charge. If Ralph represents civilization while Jack is hearing the call of the wild, then it is Piggy (Hugh Edwards) who represents human intelligence. But in the inevitable shift in power that goes from Ralph to Jack as the children devolve into savages, it is Piggy who becomes the pivotal victim. What is sacrificed in the film are the two characters who occupy the next level of significance in the novel, Roger (Roger Elwin) and Simon (Tom Gaman), and while that choice is understandable it is what keeps this from being a great adaptation. Still, you cannot fault Brook for reducing the novel to the pivotal triad and the essence of Golding's novel is here if not the depth and rich symbolism. But even as we marvel at the performances that Brook coaxes from his young actors, and the cinematography by Tom Hollyman (who had been a still photographer before this film), we really do have to remember that it is 1963 and the idea of depicting the horrors of this novel on the screen was a risky endeavor. The fact that the novel is allegorical (i.e., Brooks is probably right in claiming on the basis of his filming experience that in the real world the boys would not have lasted a week) would not be enough to temper the reactions of audiences to little boys killing one another in the wild. This Criterion Collection edition has the usually goodies, although instead of a scholarly commentary track this time it consists of reminiscences by Brook, producer Lewis Allen, director of photography Tom Hollyman and cameraman/editor Gerald Feil. As such tracks go it is certainly above average, but I have to admit that I enjoy the academic approach usually found on Criterion's DVDs. There are also excerpts from the novel read by Golding that are interesting, although obviously not insightful (the excerpts are keyed to the same scenes in the movie). There is also a clip from Gerald Feil's documentary "The Empty Space" showing Brook's method of creating theater, a production scrapbook, outtakes, home movies, a deleted scene, and the original theatrical trailer
Rating:
Summary: The Survivors Are Due on Maple Street
Review: The 1963 version of Lord of the Flies is a very interesting adaptation that depicts the savagery that lies within each of us. It is so profound that it makes one wonder about not what we are like but what we are REALLY like.
In the story, young, English schoolboys are castaways stranded on an island with little hope of being rescued or even detected. They form their own microcosm of a government so as to establish an organized, daily routine that will enable them to hunt, gather, and shelter themselves in order to withstand the harshest elements of Mother Nature.
At the start, they are, again, English schoolboys who are well-mannered and civilized. However, as the days pass, they lose their capacity to maintain any stable, social order as the "warrior within" that helps them to hunt down and kill wild animals for food, thus survival, becomes the haunting, albeit primal, emotion of savage paranoia that causes them to hunt down their own kind.
Two programs come to mind. One is Survivor, because of the island setting (The movie was shot in Puerto Rico), and the other is the Twilight Zone classic The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, because there was a perception that in the island was a beast out there that the boys would have to either appease or kill.
Quite frightening is that what might be described as a Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde metamorphosis as one sees the breakdowns in Lord of the Flies is a character devolution that would be so gradual and so subtle that it would be difficult for many to see the perils that would lie ahead.
A great classic is this movie, a forthcoming of a psychological case study that has often been shunned and ignored by many industrialized societies that choose to deny that youngsters are not necessarily the so-called sweet, little angels that they have been stereotyped. Truly, this was a bold step to possibly suggest that, no matter our background or social status, there is that beast within us that must be both acknowledged and contained and that to not be so frank can lead to destruction, both individually and societally.
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