Ervolino: Is 'The Beguiled' a chick flick, a horror movie or both?

OK, so what happens to Colin Farrell in “The Beguiled?”

No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.

Well, I do want to know. Sort of. The commercials more than hint at a rather unsettling ending. But none of the reviews have given away precisely what happens to him.

So, do I want to see this thing or not?

Oh, I don’t know...

Generally speaking, movies in which a woman gets mad at a man, drugs him and then says “Get the saw!” tend not to end well. At least not as far as the man is concerned.

And who wants to see something like that?

Not many of the men I know. As for the women...

Last week, when I posed the question to a group of friends — male and female — answers varied widely.

From the men:

“No way.” “Get out of here.” “Reminds me of ‘Misery.’ Mean, nasty women doing horrible things to a man. No thanks.”

From the women:

“Looks great!” “I’m going this weekend!” “I saw it last Friday and can’t wait to see it again!”

The movie, directed by Sofia Coppola, stars Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell, Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning.

The plot: During the Civil War, a wounded Union soldier is taken in by the residents of a Southern girls’ boarding school. They tend to his wounds and he tends to their hearts, among other things.

Actually, he charms, manipulates and seduces a couple of them. Or, more than a couple (Hey, there was no TV in his room. What else was he supposed to do?)

Apparently, things in the Old South go way south after that. And the next thing you know, Farrell is drugged at the dinner table and Kidman, seen in a blood-spattered apron, is calling for a saw.

Is she cutting down a magnolia tree? Building an adorable toy box for her nephew? Chopping up the other main character?

Ouch.

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Ms. Coppola’s “The Beguiled” is a remake of the 1971 film of the same name, directed by Don Siegel and starring Clint Eastwood, Geraldine Page, Elizabeth Hartman and Pamelyn Ferdin. (Remember Pamelyn? In the 1960s and 1970s, she played everyone’s daughter.)

I watched the trailer for the original film last week on YouTube. Even though it’s fairly obvious that Eastwood’s character is a scamp who’s up to no-good with the innocent school girls who saved his life, the man doing the voice-over notes,  “He’s brought to an all-girls school to become the prisoner of these man-deprived women...these man-eager girls!”

The trailer found its way onto YouTube years ago, long before Coppola even began working on her version. And you can tell from the comments that audiences of today find the voice-over “misogynistic” and “offensive.”

(My favorite response, though, came from someone who was obviously too young to remember the Clint Eastwood of the 1970s: “This guy looks like Wolverine.”)

The voice-over continues: “Consider the possibilities. Is he a helpless victim to be threatened, teased, enticed, loved at their will and pleasure? Or is he a MAN — aggressive, wooing, demanding, who must love to stay alive?”

Poor guy.

Have you ever had to love to stay alive?

I haven’t, but it sounds exhausting.

I never saw the 1971 film, which came out the same year as Eastwood’s “Play Misty for Me” (big hit) and “Dirty Harry” (huge hit).

After it was released, director Don Siegel said his version was about “the basic desire of women to castrate men.”

Ouch.

Is that really what women desire? Through the years, I’ve asked many women what they wanted for their birthdays and that item never popped up on their lists.

Not surprisingly, I’m not the only man who squirmed and became light-headed during the trailer for the new film, which recently earned Coppola the best director prize at the Cannes Film Festival. (She is only the second woman in cinema history to do so. Kathryn Bigelow was the first.)

Now, come on: Wasn’t taking the prize an obvious reflection of Coppola’s basic desire to castrate the male nominees?

Sure. Why not?

Coppola, the daughter of legendary director Francis Ford Coppola, has said she wasn’t initially interested in remaking someone else’s film, but felt she could give this story a different perspective.

Apparently, she has. After years of watching women on screen being smacked around by men, slaughtered in the shower, pecked apart by birds, stabbed, strangled, starved and skinned, Coppola has treated us to a story in which seemingly sane women — unlike Kathy Bates’ character in “Misery” — are in charge of the mayhem.

One male friend was so put off by the “foreign” premise that he asked, “This isn’t an American movie, is it?”

Oh, of course, it is.

Farrell’s character is knocked out with drug-laced apple pie.

What’s more American than that?