Saturday

Butterfly (1982)

(SPOILERS)

After having worked as a child star in a film universally acknowledged to be one of the worst ever made (Santa Claus Conquers the Martians), Pia Zadora disappeared for a couple of decades. When she returned to Hollywood, she soon built a reputation as the ultimate 1980s bimbo. People said that she not only looked like a bim, but she couldn't act worth beans, and she eventually ended up winning a special Razzie as "worst actress of the decade." To be honest, it was amazing that people still remembered her when the decade was over. By the time of the election which summarized the decade for the Razzie folks, Pia had virtually disappeared from the public eye. She was able to achieve the notoriety of being the decade's worst actress based on nothing more than two obscure stinkers made early in the decade: Butterfly (1982) and The Lonely Lady (1983).

Zadora's appeal, if that is the correct word, was her uncanny facial resemblance to a very young teen, despite the fact that she was nearly thirty when she made those two films. You know how it is with guys and young girls. Moreover, Zadora combined her little girl face with a lost puppy neediness and a very impressive womanly body. Put her in a Catholic prep school uniform, and she would have become the richest woman in Japan. Blessed with a decent set of pipes, she also could have become a Broadway-style singer, but for some reason she chose to be an actress instead, and she just never seemed to have the chops for that profession, or so went the conventional wisdom. During and after those two films, she became one of Johnny Carson's instant punch lines, and eventually her entire career seemed to consist of playing herself in skits and spoofs.

I agree with the contemporary reviewers that The Lonely Lady was a genuinely awful movie, and Pia was awful in it. The verdict of history seems to concur. The Lonely Lady actually gives Santa Claus Conquers the Martian a good battle for the dishonor of being the all-time worst Pia Zadora movie in the IMDb ratings. That is an amazing achievement, considering that Santa is rated the 40th worst of all time!

The Lonely Lady destroyed any hope Pia may have had to become a respected actress. The film was nominated for eleven Razzie awards and won six, including all the important ones. Pia, of course, won the "Worst Actress" trophy.

Butterfly also won her a Worst Actress Razzie, but that movie is a whole different kettle of crawdads. It also won her some legitimate positive awards. They loved her at Cannes, and Rex Reed praised Butterfly as if it were the second coming of Battleship Potemkin. Pia was not only nominated for the Golden Globe for Best New Star of the Year in a Motion Picture, but she won the award, and she didn't beat a bunch of nobodies, either. She beat out one of the greatest debuts in film history - Kathleen Turner in Body Heat!! Think about that. The 1982 voters had to choose the hottest newcomer and took Pia Zadora in Butterfly over Kathleen Turner in Body Heat. Pia may have become a universal punch line by 1983, but it is obvious that not everyone thought she sucked in 1982.

To tell you the truth, Butterfly is not a good movie, but it's not so bad, and Zadora was cast perfectly as a Lolita character. Stacy Keach plays a lonely hermit of a miner assigned to guard an abandoned mine out in the desert. Zadora shows up on his doorstep one day, claiming to be his long lost daughter. She's not exactly the pigtails-and-Barbies kind of daughter. She soon proceeds to show him her naughty bits every chance she gets, and does her best to seduce him, coming pretty close to success. At one point Keach is actually bathing a naked Zadora, scrubbing her breasts, before he finally pulls back and declares, "This isn't right." You have to admire his resolve, since he had been without a woman for a long time, and ripe lil' Zadora was definitely offering the ol' miner a chance to strike the daughterlode.

The atmosphere of the film can best be described as "sweat and saxophones" - pretty much what you'd expect from a script based on a steamy James M. Cain story. Unfortunately, Stacy Keach never seemed to get into the rhythm of the film and seemed oblivious to the script's inherent potential for entertaining over-the-top sleaze. He approached the entire project as seriously and professionally as if he were performing Henry V at the Old Vic. The supporting cast increased the cheese factor substantially. Burl Ives couldn't make his customary Southern Gothic appearance as the sweaty fat authority figure in a Colonel Sanders suit, but Orson Welles filled in for him, and a host of B-list celebs dropped in from time to time, including Stewart Whitman, James Franciscus, and me, I'm Ed McMahon.

It is my personal pet theory that it was McMahon's presence in this film which eventually turned Pia into a standing joke. Carson loved to ride his sidekick, and this project provided ideal grist for Johnny's joke mill. Without McMahon in the cast, Zadora might have simply faded into obscurity like so many other wannabes, but Ed's presence in Butterfly guaranteed Johnny's eternal vigilance, and Johnny did as much as anyone in the world to shape the public's opinions about popular culture.

To tell you the truth, the entire movie is raunchy and melodramatic, but it is not stiflingly awful. It's just your typical potboiler trash. Cain is the guy who wrote Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice, so his work had both the competence and the sleaziness to provide an ideal vehicle for Pia, and the premise of Butterfly seemed to fit her like a custom designed suit. Although it isn't worth your time and effort to track this movie down, it can be fascinating to watch for a while on cable. You may even find it entertaining in an operatic, white trash, Roadhouse kind of way, but be warned: all the nudity comes in the first 35 minutes!

NOTE: the film is not available on DVD.


 

Nudity

Pia Zadora (1, 2)

 

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