Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" wrote that the film "is not, indeed, successful as baroque melodrama, and, towards the end, there are so many twists and turns of plot and character that everything that's gone before is neutralized. People who consider themselves discriminating moviegoers, but who are uncommitted to Mr. Siegel will be hard put to accept it, other than as a sensational, misogynistic nightmare." A negative review in "Variety" said that the film "doesn't come off, and the apparent attempt to mesh Charles Addams style with Tennessee Williams-type material cues audience laughter in all the wrong places." Gene Siskel of the "Chicago Tribune" gave the film two stars out of four and wrote that Siegel "unfortunately elects to tell his story with a broad and leering humor that at times is barely distinguishable from a sexploitation shocker." Kevin Thomas of the "Los Angeles Times" praised "The Beguiled" as "a film of psychological suspense laced with dark humor that is a triumph of style, totally engrossing and utterly convincing." Gary Arnold of "The Washington Post" slammed the film as "anything but beguiling. Weird, yes; trashy, yes; pathetic, yes; beguiling, no." Nigel Andrews of "The Monthly Film Bulletin" called it "a film that works best when it is most outrageous. Geraldine Page's piously neurotic Miss Martha and Elizabeth Hartman's sickly Edwina hover on the brink of self-parody for most of the film, and are pushed well over in Siegel's climactic dream sequence, which begins with multiple-exposure effects and triangular embraces and ends with a shot of the two women supporting a limply naked Eastwood in the pose of Van Der Weyden's 'Pieta' (which hangs ambiguously on Page's bedroom wall)."