Wefrequently honor Donald Siegel for Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and Escape from Alcatraz(1979), but to Siegel (who directed several Eastwood films including Dirty Harry), The Beguiled was hismost personal and most successful film. In terms of box office, it fell through the cracks-neither westernnor horror-but it quickly became a cult favorite as a result. In the Civil War South, Eastwood is a woundedUnion soldier on the run. He is taken in by the students of a Louisiana girls' school, where, from his bed, hisbest fantasies and worst fears about women come horrifyingly true. The film is full of Southernstereotypes of the wilted magnolia variety-Geraldine Page as the school's headmistress who fondlyremembers incestuous desire under the elms, Elizabeth Hartman as the romantic virgin, etc.; they savor,then savage our bedridden hero, using his own proclivities against him. This is gothic horror as blackhumor. Action-director Siegel saved his most stylish turns for this project, in which flashbacks mergememory and hallucination, and the visual undermines the verbal at every turn. L.A. Times' critic KevinThomas raved, "Eloquently photographed and evocatively scored, The Beguiled, a film of stunning visualbeauty, is an example of the classic Hollywood style at its best."