The Bloodstained Butterfly (1971) Review

The Bloodstained Butterfly starts promisingly when Françoise Pigaut (Carole André), a young female student, is murdered in a city park during a thunderstorm. Her body is discovered the next day by two young children. So far so good, but then the film opts out of giallo tradition (as in not giving us deliciously grisly murder set-pieces) and spends too long being a courtroom drama instead, and not a very good one at that either. Around ten minutes from the end director Duccio Tessari seems to recall that he’s actually meant to be making a giallo and throws in a couple of quick, half-hearted murders in at the tail-end.

Initially the identity of the girl’s murderer would appear to be the most obvious, her lover, TV sports personality Alessandro Marchi (Giancarlo Sbragia). Marchi was seen fleeing the scene of the crime. However, whilst Marchi is in custody, the killer strikes again. Is it a copycat killing or is the wrong man in the dock? And do we care? Nah, not really. The film’s title is far more interesting than the actual film. There’s some promise, with the initial murder and body’s discovery real attention grabbers, but the court case really bogs things down. Perhaps I was bored and had switched off but there was a couple of times I kind of mixed up who was who and that didn’t really help with any appreciation I may have had for such a ponderous and self-important flick. The murders, often the genre’s calling card, are almost blink and you’ll miss them moments, no build, none of the usual flamboyance and consequently none of the thrills. Some critics embraced The Bloodstained Butterfly for not being as bloody or as incoherent as others in the genre. Personally I’d prefer to go for bloody and incoherent over a plodding linear narrative any time. There’s no thrills or spills adding up to a court lacking in drama and momentum. For this critic this is one butterfly that failed to take flight. Disappointing.

Trailer