Lord of the Flies

An underrated adaptation of William Golding's 1954 novel about a gang of English schoolboys stranded on a desert island after a nuclear holocaust. At first their unscheduled outward bound adventure is a great wheeze. But then things degenerate into tribal warfare based on class differences - the public school chaps are the hunters, and the oicks are virtual slaves. Golding's novel took Darwin's theories of natural selection to their ultimate conclusion, and while the apocalyptic parable is hardly the subtlest ever devised, the imagistic prose made it a devastating one. 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: Aubrey's Ralph, who just about keeps his dignity while all around are losing theirs, Chapin's beastly Jack, and Edwards' tragic Piggy, who loses his glasses and then his life.