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.
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.