Synopsis
Following a plane crash a group of schoolboys find themselves on a deserted island. They appoint a leader and attempt to create an organized society for the sake of their survival. Democracy and order soon begin to crumble when a breakaway faction regresses to savagery with horrifying consequences.
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Cast
- James AubreyRalph
- Tom ChapinJack
- Hugh EdwardsPiggy
- Roger ElwinRoger
- Tom GamanSimon
- Roger AllanPiers
- David BrunjesDonald
- Peter DavyPeter
- Kent FletcherPercival Wemys Madison
- Nicholas HammondRobert
Recommendations
- 100
Slant Magazine
Brook renders savagery with the despairing eye of a humanist, and with the irresolvable ambivalence of an artist. - 90
The Dissolve
As it stands, Brook’s adaptation is an encroaching nightmare of innocence lost, following Golding’s thesis about what happens when civilization breaks down and man’s true nature is revealed. - 80
CineVue
William Golding’s tale of public schoolboys stranded on a desert island is an iconic depiction of fundamental savagery. More than fifty years on, Peter Brook’s 1963 Lord of the Flies remains the definitive film, its hallucinogenic brutality as terrifying as ever. - 80
The A.V. Club
Like Golding's novel, Flies wears its allegorical impulses on its sleeve, but, also like Golding's novel, it rings uncomfortably true. - 70
Time Out
Brook knows he can't have his 10- to 12-year-olds mouthing philosophical and poetic paragraphs, so he shoots it like a documentary, overcoming the starvation budget, the location problems, and the sometimes awkward performances. However, the principals are excellent. - 50
Chicago Reader
William Golding's 1954 allegory on man's innate inhumanity is too facile by half, which makes it ideal for high school English classes but rather too gaseous and predictable for the movies. - 50
The New York Times
A curiously flat and fragmentary visualization of the original. - 50
TV Guide Magazine
There are some vicious highlights, but the acting is wildly variable, and the film manages to be both overwrought and dull.
