"The Butterfly Room" is a curiosity for the extraordinary casting it features of actresses from famous horror movies. There's Heather Langenkamp, from "Nightmare of Elm St", Adrienne King from "Friday the 13th", P.J. Soles from "Halloween", Camille Keaton from "I Spit on Your Grave". But of course, the real star of the show is Barbara Steele, who is famous for her roles in gothic horror films such as Mario Bava's "Black Sunday".

Other than that, it doesn't have much going for it. The story is undercut by liberal flashbacks that don't really add a whole lot, and a plot that is pretty badly told besides.

I kept watching basically for Steele's performance. Here, in her mid-seventies, she is still a magnetic performer.

The entomologist Ann (Barbara Steele) is an old lonely woman with bipolar disorder and rejected by her daughter Dorothy (Heather Langenkamp) due to a serious incident when Dorothy was a child. When Ann meets the manipulative girl Alice (Julia Putnam) in a mall, she becomes Ann's companion, receiving an allowance in return. Soon Ann finds that Alice manipulates other old women and she visits her crippled mother Olga (Camille Keaton) and she discovers that she is a prostitute that uses Alice to make money for her. Ann reacts in a violent way against Alice's mother and triggers her madness.

In the present days, Ann meets the girl Julie (Ellery Sprayberry) in her building alone in the corridor. Her mother and Ann's neighbor Claudia (Erica Leerhsen) neglects her daughter and Ann takes care of Julie. Ann brings Julie to her apartment and she does not allow her to enter in her butterfly room, where she keeps more sensitive specimens; however Julie tells to her mother that there is a girl inside the room. What is the secret of the butterfly room?

"The Butterfly Room" is a creepy non-linear movie with a deranged lead character performed by Barbara Steele. The timeline with many flashbacks seems to be confused to many viewers that apparently did not understand the plot and the movie is underrated in IMDb. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "O Segredo da Borboleta" ("The Secret of the Butterfly")

As soon as it got listed in the official program of the 30th annual Belgian Festival of Fantastic Films, I've been eagerly anticipating to see "The Butterfly Room". For obvious reasons, I presume, namely the return of horror diva Barbara Steele – the legendary beautiful and hypnotizing lead actress of such Gothic horror milestones as "Black Sunday", "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "Castle of Blood". The casting of Steele is the undeniable highlight, of course, but writer/director Jonathan Zarantonello's whole incentive of making a thriller solely revolving on female protagonists is enormously respectable and, in fact, quite innovative as the horror genre still somewhat remains a masculine world where women are often degraded to inferior roles. Apart from Barbara Steele, Zarantonello managed to gather the dignified horror ladies Erica Leerhsen ("The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"),Camille Keaton ("I Spit on your Grave"),Adrienne King ("Friday the 13th),PJ Soles ("Halloween") and Heather Langenkamp ("Nightmare on Elm Street"). To defend the honor of the male sex, there's also Ray Wise ("Twin Peaks"). I easily daresay this is the most remarkable and jaw-dropping ensemble horror cast since many years!

The plot itself also contains great thriller potential and a worthy amount of isolated moments of greatness, but sadly I have to admit that the wholesome is too often tedious and never appears to find a stable pacing. Steele is splendid as the aging but nevertheless still very stylish and fashionable Ann, a lonely woman who reverts to her hobby of collecting butterflies and exhibiting them in a sober room where only she's allowed to enter. Ann is always eager to babysit her neighbor's young daughter and she also takes obsessive custody of a girl she met at the shopping mall, because her motherly instincts remain unanswered. But Ann's caring personality also has a grim dark side that gradually comes to the surface. "The Butterfly Room" is 100% American produced, but the atmosphere feels totally European, more particularly reminiscent of those typically lurid Italian gialli and psychedelic dramas. The roots of director Zarantonello and the decades of Barbara Steele's horror experience are clearly detectable. Despite the brooding atmosphere throughout, the vast majority of the film is regrettably tame, but luckily this gets compensated with a neatly unsettling and grisly denouement. Beautiful imagery and tasteful photography complete this worthwhile effort that particularly comes recommended to admirers of strong feminine horror ladies and nostalgia.