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 ****
Review of Butterfly
