Beguiled, ThePre-Thelma and Louise, this thriller western explores the potential for dark as well as light within the female psyche. Unusually, the macho Siegel-Eastwood team produced this slow-moving period piece, with Eastwood as the wounded Yankee soldier who is rescued like a stray dog by some Southern schoolgirls. After he is taken back to their seminary, he is reluctantly offered hospitality by their headmistress and given time to recuperate. The trouble starts once he's up and about and begins bedhopping between a nubile Harris and the besotted Martha Harnsworth (Page). With so much oestrogen flying about, it's no time at all before the Southern belles are at each other's throats and at Corp John McBurney's leg, which they cut off to stop him leaving them. Enjoyable though, in a macabre kind of way, and beautifully photographed by Surtees.
|
