A group of young English schoolboys are marooned on a South Pacific island after a plane crash. There's a war going on. Ralph encounters an asthmatic bespectacled Piggy. They find a conch and start blowing. The other kids gather. Jack leads a group of choir boys. The boys vote and elect Ralph leader. Ralph makes a rule that only the boy with the conch can speak. One of the younger boys claims to see a snakelike beast. Piggy uses his glasses to start a fire. Jack has a knife and the choir boys with newly made wooden spears kill a pig. Meanwhile a plane flies overhead but Jack's group had let the fire die out. Ralph and Jack conflict. The children begin to fear a beast that comes out of the sea and Jack vows to hunt down the beast. Jack and Ralph lead the group into the jungle and find a pilot in a parachute. They all run away thinking that it's the beast. Jack belittles Ralph as a leader and starts his own tribe. After a hunt, Jack puts the pig's head on a spike as an offering to the beast and then raid Jack's camp for fire. Simon discovers the pilot and tries to explain the feared beast. The children mistake him for the beast and kill him. After Jack's group steal Piggy's glasses, Ralph's remaining group go to confront Jack. Jack's cruel second-in-command Roger pushes over a boulder and kills Piggy. Ralph goes into hiding and Jack tries to hunt him down.

The use of unknown young boys to play the boys give it a feel of faux realism. The boys are very naturalistic. The use of such young boys heightens the fear. James Aubrey has an inner intelligence that shines through as Ralph. Hugh Edwards is a great Piggy. Tom Chapin is not quite threatening enough as Jack. The black and white puts the movie in a stark world. It does justice to the words on the page.

This rather stark, black and white film, captures the surreal elements of the classic William Golding novel. A group of British choirboys find themselves stranded on an island. To survive, the older boys take on parental roles and create a society. Golding feels that the boys, who represent society as a whole, will ultimately come into conflict and create tribes. I always thought this was a cynical view of the world and others have agreed. Now, looking at the climate of U.S. and the world in general, I'm starting to see him as quite prophetic. The movie is bare bones and bleak; but that's what sells it. The later version of the book is more graphic, more colorful, and much less effective. It plays up the violence. It also doesn't get into the religious implications where this does that nicely.

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.