The Beguiled is a 1971 American Southern Gothic psychological thriller film directed by Don Siegel, starring Clint Eastwood, Geraldine Page and Elizabeth Hartman. The script was written by Albert Maltz and is based on the 1966 novel written by Thomas P. Cullinan, originally titled A Painted Devil. The film marks the third of five collaborations between Siegel and Eastwood, following Coogan's Bluff (1968) and Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), and continuing with Dirty Harry (1971) and Escape from Alcatraz (1979).
Film poster by Bob Peak
Southern Gothic is an artistic subgenre of fiction, country music, film, theatre, and television that are heavily influenced by Gothic elements and the American South. Common themes of Southern Gothic include storytelling of deeply flawed, disturbing, or eccentric characters who may be involved in hoodoo, decayed or derelict settings, grotesque situations, and other sinister events relating to or stemming from poverty, alienation, crime, or violence.
Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).
Seward Plantation House, Independence, a strictly fantastical one.
Eudora Welty was labeled a Southern Gothic author, though she disliked the label
Cherie Priest has been identified as a modern Southern Gothic writer