Happy New Year, Enemaniacs!

B-Movie Enema kicks off 2025 with a whole month dedicated to the pint-sized starlet Pia Zadora. Why? Because why not! She’s spunky and cute and she happened to make some pretty bad movies. But where do we start? Santa Claus Conquers the Martians? How dare you think I would stoop so low to pick this low-hanging fruit! No, like lil Pia herself, I’m going for the fuckin’ gusto. This month is gonna be wild, my friends, but we’re kicking things off with 1982’s Butterfly.

Now, I can hear you already… “What’s Butterfly? Why are you rizzing this up so much already? Is this really the gusto?”

Holy shit, yes it is, and I will explain why in a bit. First and foremost, we’ve got ourselves a returning director, Matt Cimber. Cimber did The Candy Tangerine Man. This will definitely not be the last time you will see his name on this blog in January. And I promise you Mr. Cimber has a whole lot more I could cover on this blog between his sexploitation, blaxploitation, and his fantasy film Hundra. Anyway, this guy was mostly known for lower-budget fare but he might be best known as being the ex-husband of Jayne Mansfield. He and Mansfield divorced about a year before her untimely death in 1967.

But now that we have Matt Cimber out of the way, let’s get to the much, much, much bigger names associated with this movie. Of course, right at the top of the cast is Pia herself. This was entirely built around showcasing her as a new starlet for the 80s. Her career actually goes back to her youth in 60s. I mentioned already that she appeared as Girmar in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. She also had work on stage in the Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof in the mid-60s. Zadora was a double threat of sorts. She could act. She could sing. She might have been small in stature, but she sure was pretty and could be a presence on the screen.

In the early 80s, she was married to Meshulam Riklis. He was an Israeli financier and 30 years older than Pia. He decided to make her a true star by financing Butterfly, an adaptation of James M. Cain’s 1947 crime-drama novel. Cain was sort of back in the pop culture zeitgeist as a second adaptation of his The Postman Always Rings Twice was released in 1981 with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange starring and Bob Rafelson directing a David Mamet script. Those are massive names. The movie is… not great, but it’s worth watching for the steamy Nicholson/Lange scenes.

Riklis must have had some favors to call in because this all-star cast includes Stacy Keach, Ed McMahon, Orson Welles, Stuart Whitman, and James Franciscus. The music was even done by Italian maestro Ennio Morricone. Keach was probably about at the height of his career at this point as he was consistently working in film in the 70s and was about to transition to play Mike Hammer on TV for multiple years in the 80s. Stuart Whitman was a consistent workhorse in movies for decades at this point. James Franciscus was already well known to many as the lead in Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Ed McMahon was seen every weeknight on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Of course, then there was Orson Welles. This was well past the time when Welles was less a movie icon and more of a recognizable face and voice. Regardless, it still wasn’t nothing to see his name included in the cast of a movie.

Now, the key names in the story that surround the movie Butterfly are Pia Zadora, Orson Welles, and Meshulam Riklis. Later in this review, I’ll do a little more legwork as to why they are key names and what Butterfly is best known for today. There’s a controversy around this movie that reveals a lot about the business of Hollywood. Before I get there, let’s actually dive right into this crime drama, shall we?

This is the type of dusty, hot, sun-soaked type of movie that you’d think would start with “It was 1937 on the Arizona-Nevada border… It was hot. Hotter than a priest trying to wiggle his way through a kid’s birthday party. It was hot enough to make you soak your pants and that’s before you see the girl lookin’ to hitch a ride on the side of the road. Yeah… She, just like that day, was a hot one.”

Okay, maybe Cain didn’t write like that really, but what he did do was write books about drifters and lusty women. It just so happens Butterfly is about a lusty woman drifter. Anyway, Pia plays Kady. She’s looking to go to a place called Good Springs. A local in a truck picks her up and questions her decision to go to a dead town like Good Springs. Pia doesn’t answer, but only sits out and reveals a lusty leg.

It turns out to be an act that brings out the creep in this originally, seemingly, nice guy who picked her up.

Simply sticking his hand up her dress to tickle her lady bits is enough to nearly make him cream his overalls. He initially tells Kady that he will actually be turning off the road about 7 miles outside of Good Springs. But when he starts digging around so far up her dress that he starts tickling the back of her teeth, he decides he will go on ahead to Good Springs. That is until he decides he needs to pull over and fuck right then and there. Kady removes his boots and unbuttons his overalls. That’s when she makes a run for it to get away from him.

As she runs off she finds a small shack in the middle of the desert. She decides to use her charms and wiles to make herself at home on the porch. When a truck pulls up to the ramshackle house, we learn this belongs to Jess Tyler, played by Stacy Keach. Now, Jess? He ain’t one to not check out what showed up on his doorstep. And be it that this is Stacy Keach, Kady is far more interested in what he has to offer than that goober truck driver who got extremely handy extremely quickly.

Jess isn’t quite easily swayed by a sweaty. sexy Pia Zadora. He wants to find out who this girl is and why she’s sitting on her porch with a suitcase bigger than she is. She reveals she knows who he is. She calls him by name. She also says that she’s someone he might like to know. He tries ignoring her, but she follows him to the cow pen where she drinks some warm milk from a ladle in the bucket that just collected the white stuff from direct from the tap.

Now, admittedly, I wasn’t so much exactly paying attention about how Kady knows Jess other than Jess says he can tell she is related to the Morgan family. I was a little distracted by Kady seductively drinking milk that was “warm with foam on it” and letting my brain go directly to the gutter. That was immediately followed by me being distracted by whether or not that milk would actually taste good. Then that was immediately followed by me being distracted by whether or not I am actually finding what Kady is doing sexy at all.

But once I figured something out when I was trying to regain my senses, I have to admit that I am terribly confused. So… let’s try to unpack this. Jess Tyler was married to Belle Morgan. Some years back, Belle left Jess. It’s why he’s living alone at this abandoned silver mine as its caretaker. He’s still harboring those scars, ya see? Anyway, Kady is Belle’s 17 year old daughter. But… wait… who is her father? Well, that’s Jess.

Yeah. She has arrived at her own father’s place and, whether the film’s script, direction, or source material meant to, is playing this like she’s being a bit of a flirty tease to get to know Jess. This is even more bothersome because as she is trying to ask him why he didn’t do some things in the past to make things work out better with Belle, Jess says that if she keeps up doing and saying the things she is, something might just happen to her – implying I don’t know what. She responds that nothing will happen to her that she doesn’t want – implying I don’t know what.

THAT’S when she says she is his daughter.

So after fixin’ her something to eat, Kady tells her estranged father what’s been going on with her life for these past ten years. His wife is now running a brothel for silver miners. She ran away with a guy named Moke Blue. For the most part, Kady and her sister Janey were well-treated by the miners who came through looking for a place to sleep and fuck. However, her life is somewhat incomplete and a little messy. I’m guessing she learned how to be flirty and use her looks to fulfill various needs by being at the brothel. Maybe the worst part, though, she didn’t finish school.

She intends to stay with Jess, but he rejects her. He says he will take her wherever she wants to go, but she just can’t stay with him. When she sheds tears and says she is his daughter and has no other place to go, I guess he changes his mind. However, man… This shit is played, again, creepy that night. On the other side of a sheet, she changes into her night things while Jess can see it and you can almost see him kind of look at the outline of her body through the sheet with thoughts fathers should not have for their teenage daughters.

Look, I’m only 20 minutes into this movie and I’m already seeing why this movie was generally disliked by audiences and critics. Yeah, upon release, the movie was met with disastrous reviews. It might be safe to say that Pia Zadora’s film career was derailed before it could even lift off the ground. Keep that in mind specifically for later. Personally, I’m sure this Cain novel is titillating and interesting and, like with The Postman Always Rings Twice (which I’ve read… well, listened to the audiobook), is a good snapshot of the depression and pre-war era people of the southwest United States. However, books like to use paragraphs and allusion and descriptions to explain what people are thinking and how they are feeling. I can understand if a man sees his lover in the visage of his daughter. I can understand not expecting to have a very pretty woman (daughter or not) dropped off on his front porch and that raising questions. But it’s easier to swallow those things in the written form. In film, it comes across as skeevy and kind of gross. It reduces any shot at these characters not coming off as anything more than horny animals.

It’s frustrating on another level too. This movie looks great. I love the dusty desert setting of this movie. The abandoned silver mines Jess oversees is a striking image and there’s something rugged about it that’s appealing. Stacy Keach is a likable actor and always has been. He’s kind of perfect for the setting and he’s got the right look for the rugged setting. Pia Zadora is gorgeous. That’s never been in question when it comes to her career. I’ve got a feeling I’ll be saying that a lot this month. Also, I like Cain’s stuff. So it’s a bunch to like but starting out, this movie is tough to get into when you wonder if a guy wants to fuck his daughter and if she’s okay with that. It’s hard enough she never refers to him as “dad” or “father” because she just always refers to him by his first name.

One Sunday morning, Jess looks to wake Kady up because he’s wanting to go to church. He finds her poking around the silver mine. Here’s the beginning of the movie’s real plot. Kady wants to extract what silver is left to provide for a better life. But not just for her or for Jess, but for her bastard son, lil’ Danny. Danny’s father is a guy named Wash Gillespie. Wash’s father owns the mine that Jess was hired as the caretaker. She feels that it is rightfully hers to take the silver like Wash took her body and gave her a son out of wedlock. She wants to have enough silver to give Danny a good life. She also wants to convince Jess to take enough for him to have a good life too and be more than just a simple caretaker always fending off attacks from scavengers who want to take the silver for themselves too.

Meanwhile, at church, we see one of those scavengers, Ed Lamey, played by George Buck Flower, who goes to Sunday services with a giant shotgun. That’s not the only things that gets spooky at church. After Reverend Rivers (Stuart Whitman in a great, crazed bit of acting) tells the congregation that Kady has returned to town and is staying with her father, he preaches about the prodigal son who went off and did very sinful things. This irritates Kady. But the story of the prodigal son actually ends with the father forgiving and rejoicing with his son. Reverend Rivers gets quite over-excited when he asks Kady if she’s the prodigal daughter who will seek forgiveness by accepting Jesus and being saved and shit. She runs away from this.

Because Stuart Whitman is going all in with this performance.

Reverend Rivers tries to tell Kady he was only trying to help her. However, Kady says the help she needs is physical and something she can put in her pockets. Rivers says Kady reminds him too much of Belle. She’s not satisfied with a simple life that Jess seeks. She needs more money and security.

Kady doesn’t return until the following morning. A man drops her off and Jess demands to know where she was the night before. She claims she met a girl in town, became friends, and had a good time but he wouldn’t want to know about that. Jess comes off as almost jealous that she was dropped off by this girl’s “brother”. After thinking it over, he tells Kady that he wants her to stay there and is perfectly fine with her making friends and even having a drink, but he wants her to do that at home. While he makes his plea to her to stay, she tells him that she doesn’t think this will work out and she plans to leave in the morning.

Finally, Jess says that he doesn’t want her to get a job or leave. He wants her to stay and they will take what they can take from the mine. She goes to sleep knowing she’s done just enough to seduce him to get what she wants. And… yeah. That really is what this movie is about. Kady is indeed Jess’ daughter, and she indeed wants to use her body and charms to seduce her father so she can get exactly what she wants – riches. After the first day of mining the silver mines, she says her body hurts all over and wants Jess to rub her down while she bathes… which he does… somewhat begrudgingly. However, it’s not just her shoulders he rubs as he gets a little boob-honkin’ in too.

At least he stops short of having sex with her. Jess protests saying that he won’t go any farther because “it ain’t right” and she’s his daughter. She responds that she’s a woman too.

And that’s the great big problem with this movie. Look, I’m not a prude. I could find a movie with this exact premise interesting and compelling. Hell, it could potentially even be sexy in a taboo sort of way. However, the problem here is that we’re not exactly in step with the characters. Pia Zadora’s character is introduced as a flirt and a tease and someone more than willing to use her body to get what she needs or wants. Okay, fine. I get that. I’m okay with that. We were given important information about why she, after ten years of no contact with her father, suddenly showed up one day. We even have some idea that this runs through her family line too… this reliance on charms and looks. She’s actually fairly well fleshed out (no pun intended considering how much we’ve seen her flesh in this movie).

The problem is with Jess and the actual relationship between the two characters. Jess is a loner, sure. Jess is simple only wanting to do his job, go to church, and do both things well and regularly. Fine. However, we don’t fully understand his damage. We know he reacted to the name Moke Blue, but what I mentioned earlier about his wife, Kady’s mother, ran away with Blue? That was because I can find that on the film’s Wikipedia page before the movie really tells us anything about that. We don’t really FEEL that Belle Morgan embarrassed Jess Tyler when it comes to the town and the region. We just think Reverend Rivers is calling Kady a slut because she looks sexy and lived elsewhere. We don’t really understand why Jess struggles with his past and why he is struggling with his present. He can’t look at Kady without being overcome with lust. Why? Is it because he’s overcome with his past and the pain of his wife leaving him and taking the kids? Is it because she looks like her mother? Is it because he’s lonely? Is it because he is lonely, she looks like his runaway bride, and he wasn’t with her as she grew into the woman she is today? The problem is that we can’t seem to work past the boiled down, nearly exploitation-level story of a sexy daughter seducing her hapless, but rugged father. I’m sure this is ironed out in the James M. Cain novel, but it isn’t translating well.

Anyway… Back to the plot of the movie. Jess and Kady find a lot of silver in the mine. However, they weren’t alone in the mine. Spying on them is Ed Lamey. A few days later, Jess and Kady go a few towns over to cash in on the silver. To celebrate, Kady wants to buy a new dress and wants Jess to get a fresh cut and a new suit. After paying for her dress, he finds Kady dancing with a man in the saloon across the street. Jess is pissed about this. She wants to leave to go for a ride in that guy’s new convertible car with his buddy. Why? She says that sometimes people just want to be made to feel good. Enraged, Jess demands she go home with him. He even says it will be “different” and that’s when the two guys jump Jess and start beating him. She helps fight them off Jess. It’s a big ol’ mess that gets the sheriff involved.

That also brings us to Judge Rauch, played by Orson Welles.

Rauch says that he doesn’t want to make a criminal out of a father simply trying to defend his daughter’s honor. That said, there are some charges he can’t overlook. Jess is up on charges of disturbing the peace and destruction of property. He is no fan of the saloon as it brings in transients and drunks and rowdy folk. So he only passes along a fine. However, Kady is not as lucky. Rauch, slightly turned on by the luscious Kady, says she’s a wayward juvenile and threatens to send her to reform school. However, because he’s got a boner over inspecting Kady’s fashion for being only 17, he just screams at Jess to provide discipline to his daughter before he sends her off to reform school.

When they come home, a surprise is waiting for Jess and Kady. Jane has arrived with Danny. When Kady introduces Danny to her “grandaddy”, Jess is disheartened and refuses to say anything more. Over time, Jess starts to act a little more grandfatherly toward Danny. Jane breaks the news that Wash told her that he was forced to leave Kady and he plans to marry her. In fact, he’s on his way to pick her up and take her away. Wash officially proposes and Kady accepts, much to her father’s dismay.

Despite the disappointment, Jess does give his blessing for Wash and Kady to get married.

As Wash and Kady plan to get married the day after tomorrow, Ed Lamey’s truck drives up the road to Jess’ place. As it turns out, Ed Lamey is friends with Belle and Moke Blue. He’s brought the couple to Jess’ to celebrate Kady’s engagement. But I’m also wandering if Blue is there looking for the astronaut Taylor, but I might be confusing that plotline with some other movie.

Moke says he has a surprise for Jess. He reveals that Belle is also with him and Ed. They have to help her out of the truck because she’s suffering from tuberculosis and in seemingly pretty bad shape. This is just turning out to be one hell of a last couple of days for Jess, huh? His daughter gets him into a fight at a saloon. He gets yelled at by Orson Welles. He is introduced to his hot daughter’s baby son. His hot daughter gets proposed to by that son’s father. His runaway wife returns. That runaway wife seems to be dying in front of his eyes. Woof…

Soon, it gets even worse. You see, it’s not long before Moke reveals he knows about the silver in the mine that he and Kady took. Jess figures out that Ed Lamey must have seen them in there and told Moke about it. After Moke reveals all of that, he goes inside to see to Belle. She asks him to take her shoes off and she tries killing him, but Moke kills her in self-defense. While at Belle’s funeral, Jess realizes that Moke has gone into the mine and is frantically chipping away at the silver inside it. Apparently, the plan all along was for Moke to raid the silver mine right from under Jess’ nose. Moke mocks Jess and says he doesn’t have the guts to shoot him over the silver. If he didn’t have the guts to do it when he stole Belle from him, he’s not going to do that now over silver that doesn’t belong to him. On top of that, he can’t even turn him over to the authorities because he’ll just say that Jess and Kady were stealing from the mine too.

However, there’s a key revelation at this point too.

So, Moke has this butterfly-shaped birthmark near his belly button. Seeing this pisses Jess off something fierce. Why? Well, Danny, Kady’s son, also has the exact same birthmark near his navel. Moke says that all the boys in his family have that same mark making Jess believe that Moke had sex with Kady and that he is the father of Danny. When Moke busts out in laughter over the idea that he had sex with Kady, Jess shoots him. Moke explains that the women in his family are the carriers of the mark and it only reveals itself on the boys. Kady is not Jess’ daughter. She’s Moke’s daughter. Belle tried to kill him because she thought he was there to reveal the truth to Jess. Moke begs for a doctor but Jess leaves him to die.

So here we are now, into the final act of this movie and the movie has shot off into a new direction. Jess can no longer feel guilty for wanting to have sex with Kady. He’s finally done away with Moke Blue. Now, it’s time to get things back on track for sexy times with Pia Zadora. Right?

Well, first, Jess needs to see Ed McMahon about whether or not he’s won the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes.

McMahon plays Mr. Gillespie. He’s Wash’s father and the owner of the mine that Jess takes care of to keep scavengers out. Mrs. Gillespie is played by June Lockhart. So, turns out this movie really is chock full of recognizable people. Jess is upset. He tells them that he doesn’t feel like he’s been that good of a father to Kady. Mr. and Mrs. Gillespie tell him there is nothing to be bothered by. It’s time to move forward and let bygones be bygones. Jess lies and tells the Gillespies that Danny is not related to them and that the father is Moke Blue. He explains the butterfly birthmark and Mrs. Gillespie says two men with the same birthmark must make what Jess says true. Jess tells Wash that he should just never see Kady again.

On the wedding day, Jess, Kady, and Janey wait for Wash to come and pick her up to go to the wedding, but he never comes giving Kady a super pouty face.

So… What’s a guy who just found out that the girl he thought was his daughter and got tempted by her sexiness only to find out that he’s not her father and can just go to Poundtown with her once he figures out a way to get rid of her fiance to do? Well, he moves in on her! To do so, he plays up to her desire to clear the mine of silver. But first… Poundtown. They start to have wild sex right at the entry to the mine but fail to realize that Ed Lamey is spying on them.

The next day, the sheriff arrives with warrants for both Jess and Kady on charges of incest. In court, Ed Lamey tells the story. He explains to both Judge Hauch and the prosecutor all the sultry details of where Jess touched Kady. The prosecutor speaks to their moral failures. The fantasy? Oh the prosecutor says it’s fine for a man to fantasize about his daughter. It’s the act that is on trial. So… Keep going on The View, Donnie, and talk about dating your daughter. Apparently, you can get off scott-free on that.

Just like everything else.

Anyway, fuck… Where was I? Oh yeah… At the arraignment, Rauch says that if Jess pleads guilty, he’ll go to prison and there will be no trial. If he also agrees that he forced himself on her, she will be let off and freed. So he pleads guilty and he forced her to have sex with him. Kady refuses that and tells the court that she wanted everything he did done to her. She says that he was kind and tender. She never looked at him as a father. for more than half of her life, he was not present. She sees nothing wrong with what they did.

As Judge Rauch passes down judgment that both of them will go to prison for ten years and Danny would be handed over as a ward of the state, Jess finally confesses that she is not his daughter. He says that Moke Blue was her father. He tells the story about how Moke and Belle had affairs for a long time. He explains he didn’t reveal that earlier to her because she never really had a father and he loved her. He wanted to provide for her.

Surprisingly, it’s also revealed that Ed and Moke were half-brothers. They both had the same mother. That means that both Danny and Ed Lamey will have the same birthmark. Lamey initially tries to get away to not show the birthmark, but his shirt is ripped open to reveal it. Ed then says that Moke wanted to reveal that after the wedding so he would be entitled to part of the silver mine. Rauch dismisses the case immediately.

Outside the courthouse, Wash is waiting for Kady and tells her what Jess said to him and his parents. Kady tells Jess that while she does love him, she is going with Wash because he can provide for her and Danny in ways he can’t. Jess says he doesn’t want to lose Kady, but she says that he will never lose her. He’ll always be her daddy. She and Janey leave with Wash. Jess returns to his life of solitude. As Jess drives away from the courthouse, Ed Lamey’s truck soon turns out and follows Jess as the movie ends.

Alright, so let’s talk about this movie that is more a forgotten melodrama of its time and less of a complete trainwreck that it is kind of remembered for being. First and foremost, I have to say that there are things I like about this movie. I LOVE how this movie looks. I mentioned that already. There’s this period of time in American history between the end of World War I and before the United States joined World War II where the desert landscape of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Southern California has this untouched and lonely feel to it. This is where writers like James M. Cain set some of their stuff or movies like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre were shot that plays to the ruggedness of that era juuust before America became the super duper power that we are today. It’s a beautifully orange movie. A lot of credit to the cinematography done by Eduard van der Enden plays into that lonely look and feel of this movie.

Second, I think Stacy Keach is very good in this movie. He kind of gets lost in the Pia Zadora of it all or the small bit part given to Orson Welles. He is understated. He rarely ramps up any explosive emotion like Stuart Whitman does in his single scene as Reverend Rivers. He’s carrying a lot of pain and suppressed passion. I like that. I feel for the guy. He’s clearly purposely living alone. You get that just by looking at him in his very first moment on screen.

But this movie isn’t about anyone or anything else than Pia Zadora. She is portrayed as a little bit femme fatale, a little bit troubled and dangerous woman, and a little bit jailbait in this movie. It’s clear that everything about this role was for her to make a huge, sexy splash in the biggest possible way to basically write a check for the rest of her career. I think she’s perfectly fine in this movie. I assume it was a performance, a look, and a movie that garnered some buzz around her – both good and bad. In fact, the oh-so-clever folks at the Golden Raspberry Awards found it enough of a movie that had some sort of talk and buzz around it that they decided it was worthy of TEN nominations. These were for Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Actress (Zadora), Worst Supporting Actor twice (Ed McMahon and Orson Welles), Worst Supporting Actress (Lois Nettleton who played Belle Morgan), Worst Screenplay, Worst Musical Score, Worst Original Song, Worst New Star (Zadora again). It won three. Zadora won both of her nominations because they do that because they think it’s funny to pick on someone because that’s what the Razzies do, and Ed McMahon because it’s funny because he was super famous for The Tonight Show.

I hate the Razzies.

Now, I suspect that the movie got this attention from the Razzies because of what this movie is most notable for 42 years later. At the 39th Golden Globe Awards, Butterfly was nominated for three awards. This included Best Support Actor for Orson Welles, Best Original Song for “It’s Wrong for Me to Love You” which appears at the end of the movie, and the lone win for the movie – New Star of the Year for Pia Zadora. She defeated Elizabeth McGovern and Howard E. Rollins for Ragtime, Kathleen Turner for Body Heat, Rachel Ward for Sharky’s Machine, and Craig Wasson (of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 fame) for Four Friends.

Now, generally speaking, I don’t see anything wrong with Zadora’s performance. She’s fine, but what she was up against was massive. How did she win? While it is not confirmed whatsoever, there have long been rumors that Zadora’s husband, Meshulam Riklis, bought her the award. The claim is that he paid for members of the Hollywood Foreign Press, the group that puts on the Golden Globes, to go to Las Vegas to watch a Pia Zadora performance. Zadora herself still defends that she did not win the award due to any kind of underhanded business like that, but considering how the film did not register at all for anyone and it certainly didn’t lead to a huge film career for the actress, it’s hard to necessarily believe that everything was totally above board. To be honest with you, this film, which is more or less a fine melodrama that maybe isn’t that great but is far from Razzies-level bad, is mainly only remembered for being at the center of this controversy.

Plus, if you know anything about how studios and agencies advertise and campaign for awards season, it really does not seem too far out of the realm of possibility that the Hollywood Foreign Press could be “convinced” to award this film something.

To be honest, as much as I complained earlier that the movie didn’t do a good enough job of being interesting with the whole incest story concept, I’m not sorry I saw the movie. I didn’t care much for the way the movie tried to draw me in with that, but I did like the reveal that Moke Blue was really the father and he had long been messing with Jess and this was the last straw and the one thing that Jess could use to free himself from all that suffering. I’m sure that’s even better in Cain’s book. However, the final 15 minutes or so in the courthouse with the charges of incest was so bad. It brought the entire release of Jess and Kady finally being able to give in down like a lead balloon.

However, in the end, I can understand how this is somewhat forgotten. It came and went with little fanfare except for the Golden Globe thing and the Razzies overstating its forgettableness. Still… There were things to like about it. Keach is great. Zadora is very pretty and, at times, extremely sexy and alluring. I liked the twist about her parentage. I liked how the movie ended in maybe one of two ways it possibly could. Both of those possible endings it should have landed on meant Jess doesn’t get the girl and he retreats to his life of solitude. Yeah, I’m not sorry I saw it, but don’t have much reason to see it again.

Next week, let’s go to the scene of the Golden Globes alleged crime… Las Vegas! This time Pia Zadora will be a gangster’s girlfriend while cops protect her so she can testify in court in Fake-Out! Be sure to be back here in seven days. Until then, I’m headed out to Nevada or Arizona or somewhere to see about some silver in a mine.