Lord of the Flies | | Cast : | Balthazar Getty | | Director : | Harry Hook | | Studio : | Mgm/Ua Studios | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | March 16, 1990 | | DVD Released Date : | November 20, 2001 | | Language : | French (Subtitled), English (Dubbed), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 28, 2005 | | Summary | This version simply misses the point. Get the Peter Brook version | Content
 | `Lord of the Flies' has been made into a movie at least twice since the William Golding novel of the same name became a cult classic / must read volume for high school and college students in the late 1950s. The first version, which follows the novel very closely, was done in black and white by the noted director, Peter Brook in 1963. The second version was done in color by Harry Hook and released in 1990.
Like many remakes in the same language, one immediately wonders why bother, as the original Brook version is more than gripping enough to convey the message of the novel.
To highlight the differences between the two versions, let me outline the story shared by the two versions.
The scene is set when an airplane carrying school children crashes in the South Pacific, of the coast of a remote tropical island. Approximately 30 of the children, ages 6 to 13 make it to shore and gather on the beach to work out how they are to survive and assume that since they are far removed from their original destination and the island is small and uninhabited, there is a good chance it will take a long time, if ever, for grown-ups to find and rescue them. The first two principle characters are Ralph, one of the two or three oldest boys who we meet first, in the company of an intelligent, bespectacled, slightly overweight boy of the same age known as `Piggy'. The third main character is Jack, about as old and as fit as Ralph. Three minor named characters are Simon, who is prone to fainting and `seeing things' and Sam and Eric, a pair of twins.
An early vote sets up Ralph as the leader, with a few rules establishing a conch shell found by Ralph and Piggy in the first reel as the symbol of the right to speak to the gathering of boys. Jack immediately assumes the responsibility as leader of a `gang' (later to become a `tribe') of hunters who will also take responsibility for maintaining a signal fire which Ralph succeeds in lighting by using Piggy's eyeglass lens as a means of concentrating sunlight on a clump of tinder.
Jack's gang gets involved too much in hunting and allows the signal fire to go out just as an aircraft flies near the island. Soon, a story evolves about the presence of a monster on the island. This creates the pretext for Jack to split off from the group with his tribe and create a camp at a more defensible location. As this larger group becomes more and more primitive, they raid Ralph's camp and steal Piggy's specs since it is the only means they have for starting fires. To placate the monster, the head of a killed wild pig is cut from its carcass and stood on the top of a pole near the suspected monster's lair as an offering to the monster.
After a few days, Simon observes this pig's head and its very large collection of flies feasting on the festering flesh and imagines he hears the pigs head speak to him, hence, the source of the title. Simon is then killed when the hunters mistake him in the night for the monster.
When Ralph and Piggy walk to Jack's camp to recover Piggy's specs, Piggy is killed by another `accident' when Jack's tribe members pry a large boulder loose that falls on Piggy. Ralph and Jack fight, Ralph is driven off, and the whole tribe sets fire to the jungle to flush out Ralph and, presumably, kill him. Both stories end as Ralph runs to the beach to find himself at the feet of a very professionally uniformed member of his country's elite armed services.
Hook spices up the dialogue by making the boys much more hip with lots of swear words and references to contemporary popular shows such as Alf and Miss Piggy of the Muppets. Unfortunately, Hook looses the two most important elements of the whole story. In the beginning of the novel and, subtly, in the beginning of Brook's film, we see that the world is once more at war and the boys from several different schools are on a plane to Australia to find relative safety from the coming (nuclear?) conflict. Hook shows nothing of this, giving us simply a group of boys from the same military academy on a trip to goodness knows where. This totally looses the whole allegorical sense of the story where the conflict between the boys mirrors the war in the world at large, especially the sense of the last scene where the world (island) is destroyed by the conflict (fire).
The second major oversight in Hook's rendition is that there is never enough attention given to the significance of the pig's head, Simon's vision, and the sense of `The Lord of the Flies'. A less important point is that the origin of the monster myth is different in the two movies. Brook's film follows the book and has it be a misinterpretation of a billowing parachute from a fallen, dead pilot. Hook creates the myth out of the spasms of the downed plane's delirious pilot as he finds refuge in a cave and is rediscovered by Simon who believes he is a monster.
Both movies do a credible job of depicting the fall of nominally civilized boys into savagery and myth. The combat between Ralph and Jack near the end is straight out of Frazier's `The Golden Bough' on the myth of killing the king. Unfortunately, Hook's version seems as eviscerated as the pig carcass, as all the great allegorical of the original story are totally lost. And, as minimal as they were, I even think the boys' performances in Brook's version are better done, as their initial innocence in the face of this loss of civilization makes their transformation all the more interesting.
Brook's version is highly recommended.
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| Rating | | | Date | August 19, 2005 | | Summary | What's not to like | Content
| This movie is one of my all time favorites. A true cult classic. Watching the kids grow and develop their own society with it's rules and ranking each other is fun to see. The kids in this movie all act like veteran actors and show poise beyond their years. A must watch for any movie fan. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 09, 2005 | | Summary | A Disappointment.... | Content
| When I read this novel, I wasn't thrilled with it, but it is definitely worth reading. I was excited to see the movie, but I was very disappointed afterwards. The movie barely stays true to the book, and there are ridiculous added scenes. Intense events in the book are totally omitted.... If you plan on seeing this movie, go straight to the sixties version. It is MUCH better. Although, I guess that maybe the point of the movie wasn't really to stay so true to the book, but if that isn't what you are looking for, go for the sixties version. If you do see this version, make sure you read the book first. It will make no sense to you if you haven't read the book first. No matter which version you choose, Good luck! |
| Rating | | | Date | April 30, 2005 | | Summary | Hall of shame | Content
| We watched this in English class for one purpous- to mock it! This was so lame- in fact let's just countdown the lamest parts
1.The fact that they cut out the best part of the book- Simon's conversation with the beast! What were they thinking??!!!!!
2.The acting- it reminds me of some of my home movies, only worse. the whole thing is phony, cheesey, hokey and rushed. its as if a bunch of little boys had a day to film it with their mom's camera or something!
3.the novel was actually morbid and dark and thought provoking, this is just well... embarassing. how hard they're trying to be intiidating but are in reality just a bunch of squeky nine year old boys in their underware! how scary
4.The added stuff- like what's up with that pilot guy- he wasn't even in the book! and worse, they had to add so many other characters and stuff and it just dragged the movie even further down.
5.Piggy's death- LOL could they have made this any faker?
Well they achieved one thing- they ruined the lord of the flies' reputation as the most morbid and thought provoking novel and give it a cheesey and well frankly embarassing feel instead. well done whoever read the first chapter of the novel and then decided to make a movie about it! |
| Rating | | | Date | April 11, 2005 | | Summary | What happened here? | Content
| This remake was terrible! Did the people who made this movie even read the book? What's with them being from an American military school? Why not an American boarding school? Or have the boys be from Catholic schools?
In the book I felt so sorry for Piggy and was very upset when he was killed. In this movie, he came across as being very annoying and I was actually happy when he died. The Piggy in the book wasn't whiny like this one was and he never cried when the others picked on him.
And where was the scene with Simon talking with the Lord of the Flies? That was only the most important part of the book! Ok, I can understand that part not being the the 1963 version because it would have been pretty risky, but the 1990? Come on now.
There is no choir in this version which was supposed to add to the irony in the book. Who would have thought that good ol choir boys would be the most ruthless people on the island?
And lastly, there's an adult on the island! I think that speaks for itself. And the boys were all not supposed to know each other. The only ones who did in the book were the choir, and Samneric for obvious reasons.
Watch the 1963 version instead. It's so much better than this. |
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