The Beguiled (1971)
It's the Clint Eastwood movie that time forgot! Which seems a little unfair in my eyes, as it's a damn good film. As directed by Don Siegel, it's a creepy little piece of Southern Gothic involving a wounded Union soldier (Eastwood) who is taken to recuperate at a school for girls in the South. As soon as he can stagger around on crutches, he's playing games with three of the school's residents -- the headmistress, a repressed teacher and a sexually precocious student. Naturally, none of this ends well. Eastwood's character is established fairly early on as a guy who'll do whatever he needs to get what he wants (there's a great scene where he waves away accusations of violence by claiming to be a Quaker medic -- while a flashback shows us quite a different tale), and being that he's a Yankee in the middle of a group of Southerners, there's always tension as to whether his manueverings and attempts to ingratiate himself with his hosts will be accepted or rejected. The film starts out offbeat and interesting, then there's a crucial action a little past the midpoint which sends the film sailing into much darker waters. As it stands, The Beguiled might be the precursor for the late-70s/early-80s wave of rape-revenge films -- and that's all I'll give away about the film's second half, which culminates in a grim shocker of an ending. See it.
Grade: B+
It's the Clint Eastwood movie that time forgot! Which seems a little unfair in my eyes, as it's a damn good film. As directed by Don Siegel, it's a creepy little piece of Southern Gothic involving a wounded Union soldier (Eastwood) who is taken to recuperate at a school for girls in the South. As soon as he can stagger around on crutches, he's playing games with three of the school's residents -- the headmistress, a repressed teacher and a sexually precocious student. Naturally, none of this ends well. Eastwood's character is established fairly early on as a guy who'll do whatever he needs to get what he wants (there's a great scene where he waves away accusations of violence by claiming to be a Quaker medic -- while a flashback shows us quite a different tale), and being that he's a Yankee in the middle of a group of Southerners, there's always tension as to whether his manueverings and attempts to ingratiate himself with his hosts will be accepted or rejected. The film starts out offbeat and interesting, then there's a crucial action a little past the midpoint which sends the film sailing into much darker waters. As it stands, The Beguiled might be the precursor for the late-70s/early-80s wave of rape-revenge films -- and that's all I'll give away about the film's second half, which culminates in a grim shocker of an ending. See it.
Grade: B+
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