James M. Cain's (Mildred Pierce, Double Indemnity) once-shocking 1946 novel …has been turned into a most entertainingly sleazy melodrama…Jess Tyler, played in good, legitimate, laconic style by Stacy Keach, is now a desert hermit, left to guard an abandoned silver mine. ..after years of isolation, (Jess) is suddenly confronted by the return of his long-lost daughter Kady(Pia Zadora) who, as a baby, had been taken away by Belle (Lois Nettleton), Jess's wife, along with an older daughter. It's the premise of ''Butterfly'' that Kady is every father's most forbidden dream come true - an available, slutty, innocent, trampish daughter-The movie looks parched and dry, everything so dusty and unwashed you can almost smell it in a way that Cain might have appreciated. - Vincent Canby, The New York Times.