Occasionally, Clint Eastwood has been known to dabble in the genres dearest to EOFFTV’s heart, from the psychological horror of Play Misty for Me (1971) to the science fiction of Firefox (1982) and the supernatural-inflected westerns High Plains Drifter (1973) and Pale Rider (1985). And let’s not forget that two of his earliest screen appearances were uncredited roles in Revenge of the Creature (1955) and Tarantula (1955). Up among the best of them (not only of his genre films but of his films in general) was The Beguiled, his third collaboration with director Don Siegel.

Based on Thomas P. Cullinan’s 1966 novel A Painted Devil, the script strands Eastwood’s trademark machismo in a hothouse of suppressed sexuality, casting him as Union soldier John McBurney who, at the height of the American Civil War, finds himself injured and cut off from his men in rural Mississippi. He’s discovered by 12-year-old Amy (Pamelyn Ferdin), a student at the Miss Martha Farnsworth Seminary for Young Ladies and offers him shelter, though headmistress Martha Farnsworth (Geraldine Page) initially wants to turn him over to Confederate forces. She relents and decides to heal his wounds first, keeping him locked in the school’s music room. But soon his presence is awakening passions among the staff and pupils, primarily virginal schoolteacher Edwina (Elizabeth Hartman) and teenager Carol (Jo Ann Harris). McBurney works his charms on all of the women in the house (“the corporal seems to be having an effect on all of us,” observes Martha) and their well-ordered little world is soon torn apart by jealousy and lies. When Edwina finds him having sex with Carol, she causes him to fall down the stairs and severely break his leg while in a jealous rage. Martha, who has also become infatuated with him, insists that his leg be amputated to prevent gangrene as her already shaky grip on sanity gives way altogether, setting in motion a chain of events that will end in murder.

Eastwood marvellously plays against our expectations, spending much of the film in varying degrees of physical disrepair rather than haring around on horseback or brandishing guns (though distributors Universal Pictures were confused enough by this atypical Eastwood role to prominently feature him gun in hand on their posters). His earlier characters, particularly the various manifestations of the “man with no name,” flirted with morality that was, at best, ambiguous, but you always got the impression that he was operating within some sort of moral code that marked him as essentially on the side of the angels. McBurney is a very different character altogether – a manipulative provocateur who thinks nothing of kissing a young girl (“old enough for kisses” he tells Amy when he learns that she’s just 12) to save his own skin and who spends his entire time in the school playing the women off against each other.

He’s a thoroughly unpleasant sort and his mission is made all the easier given that madness is well-established in the school even before McBurney turns up. Isolated from the war-torn world around them by a curtain of Spanish moss and terrified (with just cause) of sex-starved soldiers of both sides, paranoia and fear are already at fever pitch from the outset. McBurney is merely a catalyst, the trigger that unleashes all the pent-up sexuality that has been left to develop unchecked by the women’s isolation from the world – it was always there, his disruptive presence simply set it free. McBurney callously stirs the pot, proving to be adept at recognising the simmering tensions between the women and just as skilled at exploiting their jealousies to his own end. But despite his aptitude for manipulation, McBurney is thoroughly emasculated by his circumstances – hobbled, dressed in a nightgown and confined to a household of women, he uses his manly charms to manipulate the women, but he’s very far from the virile, macho characters Eastwood played in earlier films. “Why didn’t you just castrate me?” he screams impotently at Martha after she hacks off his leg in a particularly nasty sequence made all the more unsettling for Siegel’s reticence to actually show anything. It’s an agonising and ghastly sequence, the sound of saw cutting through flesh and bone, seen only in silhouette or briefly reflected in a mirror, adding to the nightmarishness of it all. The ending is truly horrific – nihilistic, bleak and genuinely shocking, a tour de force final flourish by Siegel.

Eastwood may be the star, but he’s beautifully served by a terrific and largely female cast. Geraldine Page gives Eastwood a good run for his money as the unhinged Martha, haunted by memories of an incestuous affair with her brother and driven to a murderous rage by McBurney’s rebuffing of her sexual advances. There are other superb performances here – indeed there’s a not bad one to be found but Ferdin, Hartmann and Harris particularly stand out. Other collaborators of no are Lalo Schifrin who contributes a lovely, simple, folk-inflected score and cinematographer Bruce Surtees who lights it all beautifully, particularly the night time scenes, creating a clammy, sweaty and claustrophobic Southern Gothic atmosphere.

There are no “good guy” or “bad guy” here – just a parade of people of varying degrees of psychological damaged, each struggling with the others in an ever-shifting moral quagmire. The power dynamics are constantly and fascinatingly fluid, the relationships between the characters as much combative as sexual. Perhaps as a result of this, The Beguiled wasn’t initially a hit. Perhaps audiences were finding it difficult to see Eastwood play such a spiteful and emasculated character and certainly Universal had trouble getting their corporate head around the film’s artier aspirations – it’s more arthouse than western or action film and seemed at the time to be trying to fill a niche that had barely otherwise existed. Some have gone so far as to hail it Siegel’s masterpiece and there’s some suggestion that it might have been an influence, after fashion, on Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) – certainly Peter Weir’s film looks to have influenced Sophia Coppola’s 2017 remake of Siegel’s film. The film’s ambiguous morality paved the way for Siegel and Eastwood’s next collaboration, the brilliant Dirty Harry, making 1971 a quite remarkable year for Eastwood (he also squeezed in his directorial debut, Play Misty for Me).