The Lord of the Flies (1990, PG-13, MGM/WB/Columbia/Castle Rock, 90 min, dir. Harry Hook, based on the novel by William Golding (1954)). I recall that other students (one 'best friend' in particular) discussed this book a lot my senior year in high school (1961), and English teachers today often recommend it as a suitable choice for a book report. Teenage boys still seem interested in the way the boys in the film develop political power struggles (who belongs and who doesn’t) when left stranded on a tropical island.

The trouble is, these boys are just too young for a meaningful story. They don’t look old enough to have hair on their legs yet; many of them would not even be in middle school yet. The ring leader Ralph, played by a 14-year-old Balthazar Getty (who played a major role in the identity switching in David Lynch’s Lost Highway), does his best but is hardly mature enough to offer meaningful leadership. The boys develop a legend about a “monster” and divide into opposing camps to fight their initiation rites. This whole problem makes better material with older students, say in a boarding school or college (say, The Lords of Discipline (1983)). This film has had several major distributors; don’t mix it up with the trilogy with a similar name!

When I worked as a substitute teacher in 2007 in a high school English class (northern Virginia), some of the film was shown during the 90 minute period and the students had a free-response video quiz on the segment. This also happened for 'Hotel Rwanda' and (reading quiz) Elie Wiesel's 'Night'.