The Beguiled is a 1971 American Southern Gothic psychological thriller film directed by Don Siegel, starring Clint Eastwood, Geraldine Page and Elizabeth Hartman.

The film marks the third of five collaborations between Siegel and Eastwood, following Coogan's Bluff (1968) and Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), and continuing with Dirty Harry (1971) and Escape from Alcatraz (1979).

[2] During the American Civil War in 1863, Amy, a 12-year-old student at the Miss Martha Farnsworth Seminary for Young Ladies in rural Mississippi, discovers a seriously wounded Union soldier, John McBurney.

Edwina, the schoolteacher who has had no experience with men, takes an immediate liking to John, as does Carol, a 17-year-old student who makes advances with an experienced air.

When John awakens and learns that his leg has been amputated, he goes into a fury, convinced that Martha performed the operation as revenge for his rejection of her sexual advances.

Meanwhile, Martha convinces the others (except for Edwina, who is not present) that they need to kill John to prevent him from denouncing them to Union troops who have made camp within sight of the school.

[11] Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that the film "is not, indeed, successful as baroque melodrama, and, towards the end, there are so many twists and turns of plot and character that everything that's gone before is neutralized.

"[12] A negative review in Variety said that the film "doesn't come off, and the apparent attempt to mesh Charles Addams style with Tennessee Williams-type material cues audience laughter in all the wrong places.

"[13] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two stars out of four and wrote that Siegel "unfortunately elects to tell his story with a broad and leering humor that at times is barely distinguishable from a sexploitation shocker.

"[14] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times praised The Beguiled as "a film of psychological suspense laced with dark humor that is a triumph of style, totally engrossing and utterly convincing.

Geraldine Page's piously neurotic Miss Martha and Elizabeth Hartman's sickly Edwina hover on the brink of self-parody for most of the film, and are pushed well over in Siegel's climactic dream sequence, which begins with multiple-exposure effects and triangular embraces and ends with a shot of the two women supporting a limply naked Eastwood in the pose of Van Der Weyden's 'Pieta' (which hangs ambiguously on Page's bedroom wall).

[18] The film was poorly marketed and in the end grossed little over $1 million, earning less than a fourth of what Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song did at the same time and falling to below 50 in the charts within two weeks of release.

It was not a hit, likely due to uncertainty on Universal's part concerning how to market it, eventually leading them to advertise the film as a hothouse melodrama: "One man...seven women...in a strange house!"

Quentin Tarantino later wrote the movie "was the closest Siegel ever came to making an art film... and truth be told, as good as it is, as its director, he's miscast.

Any young girl, who looks perfectly harmless, is capable of murder.” — Filmmaker Don Siegel from an interview with Stuart M. Kaminsky in Take One (Canadian film journal), June, 1972[22] Even when faced with Siegel's contentious statement about women, film critic Judith M. Kass probes deeper to uncover elements of feminism within 'The Beguiled', presenting an alternate perspective: These “ladies” may be more like men in every way than either men or women would like to acknowledge.

They are sexually aggressive and are depicted as being able to run their lives, fend off intruders, farm their own land, educate them selves—to do themselves those things for which women have traditionally turned to men.

[23]Kass continues: “The women in The Beguiled are not all bad; they are hard-pressed, unused to the lives they are leading, victimized by events they had not had in shaping, sexually thwarted at the stages in their development when they should be freest.

They can trust no friend, let alone foe: the Confederates who offer to guard them obviously have rape in mind and the Yankee in their midst acts like the master of a private seraglio.

Why shouldn’t they become desperate, say and do things that wouldn't under ordinary circumstances?”[24] Sofia Coppola wrote and directed a film based on the same source material with Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell, Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning.