this super creepy southern gothic melodrama star clint eastwood a a wounded confederate officer in the civil war who take in by a rural girls school and nurse back to health . a weird clash of gender ensues and with the supposedly dangerous male fall prey to a batch of seemingly harmless woman and who prove themselves to be every bit as brutal a the men wag war on one another at the battle front . this be a classic spider and the fly story and but here there one lone fly and a whole bunch of spider . geraldine page play the head mistress of the school and and she give a characteristically sensational performance . page be train a a theater actress and and it show in all of her performance . no matter what role she play and she always commit herself 100 % to it and and never once let herself drop out of character . so it be here and with this lethal spinster and who take her sexual repression out on this helpless man . each of the other girl responds to him in her own particular way a well . the two most prominent be the slutty girl who can not wait to throw throw herself at him and and the virginal one ( play by who else but the mannered elizabeth hartman . ) who act like she would fall over in a dead faint if someone so much a say the word penis to her . the schematic madonna and the whore storyline would seem heavy hand if the movie do not keep you so off kilter and so completely unsure of what be go to happen next . the most memorable scene in the film for me occur when the group of woman perform an amputation of eastwood leg and which have become infect with gangrene . again and the spider or fly allusion be clear represent they hobble him so that it that much hard for him to escape their web . a classic chiller . not a great film and but a morbidly entertaining one . grade represent a .