Butterfield 8
Butterfield 8i is a study in contrasts.
On one hand, it has by far the best intro scene in cinematic history - a very edible twentysomething Elizabeth Taylor slut waking up in a bedroom, among fluff and satin and hard liquor and cigarillos. She's pretty.
On the other hand, the butchery John O'Hara's novel suffered at the hands of the remarkably inept Charles Schne is hard to describe, if certainly not unparalelled in cinematic history. The original has some decent lines, the screenplay rings so contrived and false it made me cringe. I don't cringe easily.
Opposite Taylor plays a sort of phtysic Johnny Bravo, who ironically is a ham of such ample proportions that no item of scenery, no matter how large, no matter how forged could ever feel safe. The man has obviously chewed his way here from the center of another Earth, and will soon chew his way away. Far, far away, if hope's to be heard.
There's also an uncharacteristically pretty Paris Hilton, inexplicably called Norma ( Susan Oliver) whose lines read so incredibly sophomoric there can not possibly be any mistake as to the true identity.
All this uneven nonsense is unpleasantly wrapped in the "moral considerations" of some very pedestrian people living in primitive rural communities devoid of culture or much of an interest in the higher forms of life, with all the tiresome insistence aluminum siding salesmen would put into the sale of poorly translated, ill curated selections of the Torah (they have their own brand name they're promoting for this, B-something).
Overall, a great movie to watch with the sound off, preferably while getting a blowjob. Saving some sort of organic defect or mental perversion, ten-twenty minutes in you're done.
———- 1960, by Daniel Mann, with Elizabeth Taylor [↩]
