[yasr_overall_rating]
A girl is murdered in a park. The man is tried and convicted for the crime but afterwards the killings continue.
“The Bloodstained Butterfly” is as close to a mindless exercise as you can get and still have anything left on the screen at all. The film is a perfect giallo and meets every criteria for the genre down to the J&B, but there is so little left here once you view the movie outside of the giallo genre. It’s the kind of experience where you could likely win a wager about how the film will conclude, but even if the film takes an odd twist somewhere, it won’t really have mattered much because there’s so much fluff and needless sophistication that there’s nothing engaging. The film’s director, Duccio Tessari, co-wrote “A Fistful Of Dollars,” which is an infinitely better film. I was confused at how someone who had a credit working on such a masterpiece like “A Fistful of Dollars,” could make something like “The Bloodstained Butterfly.”
I like plenty of horror movies that are horrible, that I thought maybe this film had a chance of working, in a perverse way. But the complete focus on style did not save this film. It’s a stick-up-your-nose pretentious version of a giallo film with entirely too much exposition. The main thrust of the film focuses on the trial of a TV sports presenter, Allesandro Marchi (Giancario Sbragia) while playboy Giorgio (Helmut Berger), steals the film in his relationship with Marchi’s daughter Sarah (Wendy D’Olive).
Of course Marchi is innocent but more killings keep occurring. What happens in “The Bloodstained Butterfly” should be familiar to not just any regular viewer of giallos, but anyone who is generally familiar with film or literature. While it is beautifully shot, there just isn’t anything particularly engaging here to keep an audience wondering about how events will conclude or what will happen. There also aren’t enough small treats to even satiate the most patient film viewer. “The Bloodstained Butterfly” is like a very pretty paper doll house, beautiful to look at but there’s nothing behind it and there’s nothing to support the art direction.
I’m glad this movie was made. It’s a throwback to when the giallo industry was healthy. The film likely boosted the career of its director and also probably helped its co-writer, Gianfranco Clerici, develop an illustrious career writing Italian horror films like the significantly better “New York Ripper.” I have no idea, however, why an actor would have picked this film. A movie called “The Bloodstained Butterfly” would have been infinitely better had the film dealt with a deadly butterfly that went around killing people. I need to stop taking movie titles literally.
Now available on DVD
