In 1863, a young student named Amy finds a seriously wounded Union soldier lying in the forest near her school and carries him to the Miss Martha Farnsworth Seminary for Young Ladies. The headmistress Martha Farnsworth decides to restore his health instead of turning him over to Confederate troops. The soldier John McBurney remains locked inside the music room under watch while jealousy and deceit shift the atmosphere among the women.
Universal Pictures released this film in 1971 as the third collaboration between director Don Siegel and actor Clint Eastwood. Their previous work together included Coogan's Bluff in 1968 and Two Mules for Sister Sara in 1970. They would continue working together again with Dirty Harry in 1971 and Escape from Alcatraz in 1979.
Principal photography took place over ten weeks starting in April 1970 at the Ashland-Belle Helene Plantation near Baton Rouge Louisiana. This historic house was built in 1841 and served as the home of Duncan Farrar Kenner. Portions of the interiors were filmed at Universal Studios while the production used the actual plantation grounds for exterior shots.
Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that the film is not successful as baroque melodrama while a negative review in Variety said the film doesn't come off properly. Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two stars out of four and Gary Arnold of The Washington Post called it anything but beguiling. It was poorly marketed and grossed little over one million dollars domestically before falling below fifty in the charts within two weeks of release.
The film deals with themes of sex violence and vengeance according to Siegel who described the core idea as exploring the basic desire of women to castrate men. The central theme focused on the impact of a man having sex with multiple women. Film critic Judith M. Kass probes deeper to uncover elements of feminism within the narrative where she argues the women are hard-pressed unused to their lives and victimized by events they could not shape.