The Beguiled

Combining the conventions of both Western and Grand Guignol chiller, and often directed as if it were an art movie, this is one of Siegel and Eastwood's strangest - and most beguiling - collaborations. Eastwood is the Yankee soldier, who after being wounded during the Civil War, takes refuge in an isolated Southern seminary for young women. Shut away from the world, the women project their romantic fantasies on to him, and he responds with callous, male manipulation. But jealousy and resentment raise their heads, and he finds himself in a world of brutal revenge. Beautifully shot by Bruce Surtees, carefully paced, it's a haunting, elegant work that seems to have influenced the troubled sexuality of Eastwood's own Play Misty for Me and Tightrope.