A planeload of English schoolboys marooned on a remote Pacific island unite to build shelter and fire. But over a period of time, the boys revert to a state of savagery which seems to be motivated not by a sense of animal survival, but by a specifically human sadism. Peter Brook uses the film medium to great advantage to evoke what is truly terrifying in William Golding's well-known parable of the beast within us: namely, that the fiend emerges in the simplicity of broad daylight, on an island paradise, among a group of playful young boys unaware of their own cruelty. Brook elicits remarkable performances from his non-professional child actors, and his focus on details of boyish expression and gesture adds to the seeming absurdity of the fear which, nevertheless, mounts inexorably. (JB)