Kill Butterfly Kill Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		2.5
Audio		2.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		2.0

Kill Butterfly Kill Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson January 16, 2024

Kill Butterfly Kill (1982) is being released as part of Neon Eagle Video/Cauldron Films' two-disc set. This review focuses primarily on the export cut.

"Can the women who kill in action cinema occupy a position that has been historically thought of as exclusively masculine?" Author Kwai-cheung Lo tries to answer this central question in his fine chapter, "Fighting Female Masculinity: Women Warriors and Their Foreignness in Hong Kong Action Cinema of the 1980s," from the book, Masculinities and Hong Kong Cinema (eds. Laikwan Pang and Day Wong, 2005, Hong Kong University Press). Lo conducts his analysis of some of the "women warriors" who are featured in female cop films from Hong Kong roughly three decades ago. These feature a young Michelle Yeoh (when she known in the '80s as Michelle Khan). Lo unpacks the gender construct of "female masculinity" represented in films of that period. Director Yu-Lung Hsu also deals with similar issues of sexual politics in his ninth film, Kill Butterfly Kill (aka Underground Wife). This feature was part of the Taiwanese wave of "Black Movies," an exploitation subgenre that combines the rape-and-revenge film with the Hong Kong action film. Hsu shows the transformation of female protagonist Tang Mei-Ling (aka Donna in the export version; portrayed by Juliet Chan) from rape victim to woman warrior but ultimately undermines her character's growth pattern with a wholly unnecessary subplot that reduces her to a submissive figure.

The picture opens with Donna running along the railroad tracks during a thunderstorm and taking shelter in a warehouse. It's her bad luck that five drunken men in the warehouse immediately have carnal desires for her. The initial setup of a gang rape gives way to each man individually defiling Donna. Her loss of innocence is depicted in some insufferably long scenes (edited differently in the two cuts). Though she survives, Donna is psychologically and emotionally vanquished. She jumps off a bridge a few days later but a man named Richard (“Tattooer Ma” Sha) dives in the water to pull her out. The narrative flash-forwards six years later with Donna owning a nightclub. She reunites with Richard, who has retired as a professional hitman. Donna enlists Richard, along with a couple of like-minded girlfriends, to wage vengeance on the five men who violated her years earlier.

The actor who portrays Richard brings a rugged charisma to his role. His chemistry with actor Juliet Chan is one of the few things that works well in the film. But the film goes downhill when it introduces another source of tension for Donna. A mob-like figure, who's possibly the manager of the club Donna owns, pays her to be his mistress. This debauched figure is essentially the "boss" to Donna in every way possible. (It shouldn't be that way because she's the club's entrepreneur.) But Donna isn't even portrayed as a madam. Kill Butterfly Kill at times depicts Donna as a "woman warrior" but it both reifies and re-inscribes the male chauvinist in Taiwanese society. This may be a reality of the times but after a bruising climax that showcases Donna's masculine traits, the outcome is a big letdown.

Kill Butterfly Kill Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

This prefatory text appears prior to the movie's start:

The best surviving film elements were used for the following feature and some scenes are not ideal. We hope this doesn't hurt your enjoyment of the film.

It is important to know while watching Kill Butterfly Kill that the elements Neon Eagle Video had to work with are far from ideal. The 1080p transfer is sourced from a recent 4K restoration done from the extant negative. The film appears in its native 2.40:1 aspect ratio on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50, which is region free. Roughly one-half to two-thirds of the film looks quite good, particularly in scenes showing various colors (see Screenshot #s 4, 7, 9, 11, and 14). Cinematographer Tung-Hsiang Tu employed lens flares for some scenes. For example, see the low angle of the train tracks in #16. The flares beam across the discotheque in #2. There are a lot of shots that have green stains on the print (see frame grab #s 19-20) and red dye (#18). You can also see lighter stains elsewhere, such as in capture #13. Horizontal scratches pop up (see the top of the frame in #17). Neon Eagle has encoded the feature at a mean video bitrate of 34745 kbps.

Ten chapters accompany the 87-minute film. These can only be accessed via remote while watching the movie.

Kill Butterfly Kill Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Neon Eagle has supplied a DTS-HD Master Audio Dual Mono mix (1588 kbps, 16-bit) that's been dubbed in English. The track is flat and scratchy with pops, crackles, and warbling. Dialogue is audible to an average degree but keep in mind that Neon had to work with a damaged master that must have been difficult to clean up without tinkering with the original sound properties. This isn't an especially good dub (along with artificial lightning strikes), but that isn't Neon's fault either. There's an option to either play the film with English audio (no subs) or the same sound track with English SDH subtitles.

Kill Butterfly Kill Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary by Kenneth Brorsson and Paul Fox of the "Podcast on Fire Network" - this feature-length track by Brorsson and Fox contextualizes Kill Butterfly Kill in the context of 1980s Taiwanese cinema. They bring up the early works of Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang and briefly explain how this film differs from those two auteurs and genres in Taiwanese film outside of the "Black Movie," which they give a detailed summary of. They often focus on the theme of "sexualization" and its representation in the film. Differences between two of the cuts are also laid out. Brorsson and Fox don't really delve into American Commando 6. In English, not subtitled.

• Underground Wife Cut (1:25:42, 480i) - an alternate cut of the film (aka the Mandarin Version) that's shown in 1.33:1. It has been transferred from a VHS tape. Dual-language subtitles have been provided: the top are possibly Cantonese and the bottom are English subs. The Mandarin sound track is encoded with a Dolby Digital 2.0 monaural mix (320 kbps). The presentation has ten chapters accessible via remote control.

• Kill Butterfly Kill Trailer (2:35, 1080p) - an English-language original trailer that appears made for the American market. It's presented in a letterboxed, ultra-wide ratio (possibly 2.40:1). It looks struck from a theatrical film reel. The trailer hasn't been restored.

• Image Gallery (3:12, 1080p) - a slide show consisting of twenty-nine distinct images. (This count does not include multiple stills on some of the lobby cards in the gallery.) The images comprise publicity materials (with English text), on-set photographs, and poster sheets from both Kill Butterfly Kill (or the advertised title of Underground Wife) and American Commando 6.

Kill Butterfly Kill Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I haven't seen enough Taiwanese exploitation pictures to determine where Kill Butterfly Kill fits in the overall pantheon of this sub-genre but I feel that it probably belongs along the lower rung. It's tawdrily made and while I realize that the low budget and hammy acting imbues films of this ilk with a certain charm, the film is very inconsistent. It can be said that the movie is a star vehicle for Juliet Chan but it fails to sustain its intention of showing her transformation from rape victim to "woman warrior" type. My scores for the transfer and lossless mono are purely a reflection of how they look and sound from their original materials and not a reflection of Neon Eagle's restoration efforts. (I'm sure the specialty label did all that they could.) Fans of the film will be pleased to have the Mandarin Version and a pretty informative commentary track.