Pia Zadora is the perfect sexy nymph. Ennio Morricone provides a score that rings a bell because it almost sounds like a"spaghetti western". Stacy Keach as the lusting daddy is fine, and Orson Wells comes across as a curiosity. The problem lies with the script. At first things take their time, introducing characters at a leisurely rate. There is a slow buildup but little idea where the movie is going. Then suddenly the pace quickens, and logic begins to fly out the window. In the end there are unresolved issues dangling uncomfortably, a ridiculous legal unwinding, and the viewer is left holding a very large bag of questions. Nudity does not a movie make, and "Butterfly", despite the titillating bathtub scene, is rather unsatisfying. - MERK

Butterfly is a low quality film, with poor acting and script. Though 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's perplexing and absurd. Orson Welles is amusing as the judge.

This was probably the first film of this nature that I ever saw, and quite by accident. In the summer of 1982, I work in a movie theater and this played a week with very few people attending. Perhaps they had read the New York Times review and recalled it not being acclaimed. 40 years have gone by, maybe she and since then I've seen film versions of the plays of Tennessee Williams, William Inge and Horton Foote dealing with similar themes, or at least having similar settings. Films like what I'm talking about are not just set in the middle of nowhere. They are almost like a Petrified Forest setting, a place of little to no hope, where anything erotic gives hope that something other than what one is used to will happen. For Pia Zadora, she shows up in the middle of nowhere to meet the father she has never known, Stacy Keach, who is basically a loner, running a silver mine for the local rich man, still dealing with a hurt of her mother having left with their two children years before. Within her first night game with him, she's enticing him by undressing in front of a white sheet, her naked shadow very visible to his prying eyes.

This film is notorious on many levels, mainly because of the claim that the isadora's husband bought a Golden Globe for her, for best newcomer of the year. She also received two Razzie Awards, for worst newcomer and worst actress, and while she certainly no Carrol Baker from "Baby Doll", I did not find her really all that bad. I've seen much worse. The issue is the film itself, perverted from the start, and presenting Zadora as a new screen siren, one to rival Kathleen Turner in the same year's "Body Heat", a completely laughable idea since her character is just petulant rather than alluring. The attempted seduction scenes from father to daughter are just absurdly presented, could an indication that she's not erotic. She's psychotic.

I was surprised to find out that this was based on a novel written by James M. Cain, the author of "Double Indemnity" and "The Postman Always Rings Twice". Stuart Whitman, as a local preacher, lays into Zadora, causing her to flee the church in shame, sort of like Damien from "The Omen" refusing to go in. Ed McMahon is bizarre casting as Keach's boss. Lois Nettleton as the boozy ex wife who is dying of consumption and June Lockhart as the boss's wife provide mature feminine support, with Orson Welles in a cameo role as a judge (who somehow garnered a supporting actor Golden Globe nomination). James Franciscus and Edward Albert as the boss's son (father of her baby) other victims of Zadora's games. The one really good element of this film is the photography, utilizing a sepia tone like lens to give the deserted land is takes place on a really mysterious quality.