Lord of the Flies

In this second version of William Golding's novel, a group of cadets from an American military school are stranded on a desert island, along with the wounded pilot, after their plane crashes. Eventually the camp divides; Ralph (Getty) and Piggy (Pipoly) represent the values imposed by adults and civilisation; while they struggle to maintain a signal fire, Jack (Furrh) and his band of hunters, giving way to more primitive impulses, run rampage and turn murderous. The film, simplistically assuming the book's central metaphor to be imperialism - hence the military slant - retains the bare bones of Gollding's narrative, but that's all. There's little attempt to hint at the deeper issues, while the revelatory moment when the impaled pig's head looms in the clearing to reveal man's inner darkness, is merely flat. Executive producer Lewis Allen also produced Peter Brook's superior 1963 version; he took on the project after learning that TV producers planned a remake with an 'upbeat ending'. This is better than that, but not nearly good enough.