The Beguiled

While imprisoned in a Confederate girls boarding school, a Union soldier cons his way into each of the lonely women’s hearts.

• Director: Don Siegel
• Genre:Drama / Thriller / War / Western
• Runtime:100 minutes

Cast

Clint Eastwood : Cpl. John McBurney
Geraldine Page : Martha Farnsworth
Elizabeth Hartman: Edwina Dabney
Jo Ann Harris : Carol
Darleen Carr : Doris

Close to the end of the American Civil War, injured Yankee soldier John McBurney is rescued on the verge of death by a twelve year old girl from an all-girl boarding school in Louisiana. At first the all-female staff and pupils are scared, but as John starts to recover, he charms them one by one and the sexually repressed atmosphere becomes filled with jealousy and deceit.

After rejecting the headmistress for a younger girl, McBurney gets his comeuppance in the form of some painful Freudian symbolism — his infected leg is amputated. He reforms and announces his intention to marry one of the teachers, but it is too late; he has alienated the youngest girl, the one who first found him, by killing her pet turtle after throwing it aside in anger. In response, she picks mushrooms that the headmistress and girls use to poison him. Read more