Butterfly (1982)

It is a performances centric movie

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Butterfly is a low quality film, the script and acting are quite poor, but it is watchable for its dissimilarity and setting.Funny to me that it's labelled a crime/drama, seems they didn't want to label it anything else. The ending is perplexing, Keach's character pleads guilty of incest and commits to going to prison for 10 years when he isn't even her father, to free her of any punishment and to continue to be something. She then says she wasn't forced, which in turn causes Jess to say that Katy isn't his daughter. So he is willing to do 10 years for nothing and she was willing to receive the punishment for her actions to defend him, but not interested in staying with him. Absurd! and all still very wrong. Orson Welles was amusing as the judge.

Adaptation of James M. Cain's book "The Butterfly" won Pia Zadora a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer before anyone had even screened the film, setting into motion an awards-show controversy that is far more interesting than anything in this movie. Shabby potboiler has a sexy teenager in 1930s Arizona reuniting herself with a man who may be her long-lost father; that doesn't stop her from seducing him, which leads to dirty doings, a murder, and a final act in the courthouse (with Orson Welles as the judge!). Co-screenwriter Matt Cimber also directed the picture, but he fails to create a depiction of this time and place that is half-way realistic, preferring to let Zadora's sexual antics carry the load. She isn't terrible, yet her cameo in "Hairspray" a few years later far exceeds anything she does here. *1/2 from ****

This is a movie that would have been good as the "B" film at the drive-in. You could tell from the beginning that it was a movie made for television. I worked extra on the set, and Orson Welles had a bottle of wine behind his podium as he did his judge shtick. He drank so much he would forget his lines, and he abused the cue card holders something fierce. After awhile, we ungrateful extras were yelling, "He will drink all wine before its time!" Cruel, but we were frustrated. Stacy Keach was a consummate professional, however. He acted as though the movie was "Citizen Kane." I have had great respect for him ever since.

A few years ago, this showed up on everybody's Ten Worst list. Then with the explosion of videotape, giving people access to hundreds of really godawful movies, Butterfly kind of drifted off into obscurity.It's time to bring it back to the front. This movie seriously reeks. Pia Zadora has as much business standing in front of a movie camera as Judge Judy in a thong. I've seen classier emoting in the vice-principal's office. Sensual? Actually, she looks like a legal secretary who ate a bad clam for lunch, and her face is puffing up pretty bad. Let's face it, her acting peaked in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians; watch carefully, and you'll see her flash the camera, thankfully revealing nothing whatsoever.Stacy Keach tries to maintain his dignity, James Franciscus gets the only good bit in the movie as a spectacular slimeball, and Ed McMahon shows up at one point playing a rich, drunk Irishman - make up your own joke.But it's the script that makes Butterfly worth renting, worth owning, and worth demanding on DVD. This is one of those rare bad scripts that thrusts itself into the forefront past bad actors, bad direction, and the most ludicrous costume design since Myra Breckinridge. Seek it out, invite friends over, and everybody can slam a brewski every time the camera zooms in for an overlit shot of Mz Pia looking up into the lens and slitting her eyes (that's "expressing deep feeling"), or Stacy Keach making a strange face like he just caught something dreadful in his zipper (so's that).There's a whole generation out there who never heard of James M. Cain, and it's our job to get the Truth to the Youth.