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| In 1986 Butterflies in Heat appeared on video store shelves as Tropic of Desire (no, not that one), masquerading as a sexy romance. |
That lead actor is 1970s
model Matt Collins, who plays Numie Chase, a hustler who’s come down to Key
West, Florida, to put as many miles as possible between him and a potential murder charge in New York City. While there he meets Lola (the incomparable Eartha
Kitt), a nightclub singer who loves white wigs, referring to herself in the
third person, and pretty young men like Numie. However, she has no intention of
paying for it (“People pay Lola,” she informs him). Numie then spots Anne
(bland Roxanne Gregory), sitting alone in a corner of the same tawdry club, his
interest in her strictly recreational. Anne resists his advances, but only
because she is afraid of incurring the wrath of her domineering mother, Leonora (Barbara
Baxley), supposedly a very rich and very famous fashion designer though her
decaying mansion suggests the money and fame are disappearing fast. Numie instead
settles for fucking (off-screen) Anne’s no-so-closeted husband (Numie says he doesn’t
usually service dudes, but the watch he’s offered as payment is valued at
$1,000). Rounding out the cast of characters is Leonora’s plus-sized housekeeper/assistant
Tangerine (Pat Carroll), who is willing to pay for Numie’s body but settles for
his friendship instead, and Sheriff Webb (Bert Williams), who appears periodically
to rough up Numie and arrest him on spurious charges.
Butterflies in Heat—the book and the
movie—sounds like the kind shit I’d love. It’s Tennessee Williams via glory
hole, or, at the very least, a queer 92 in the Shade. Instead, I found both to be tedious and frustrating.
I bought a copy of Porter’s novel when it was re-released in the mid-1990s with
a cover more befitting a gay porn video, my hopes high that I’d found some
trash I could truly treasure. I barely made it through 75 pages before giving up.
Porter, it turned out, was more interested in having his female (and
female-presenting) characters deliver paragraphs of fanciful dialog than in Numie unleashing
the monster caged within his butterfly-festooned jeans. Its gay sensibility was
aimed not at bath house sluts, as its X-rated cover art suggested, but at drag cabaret queens.
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| I likely would have been just as disappointed if I bought the 1976 paperback edition of Butterflies in Heat (left), but at least that cover doesn't arouse expectations as high— and as hard—as the raunchy cover for the 1997 edition. |
Director Cash Baxter’s
adaptation similarly let me down despite all it had going for it. Though the film’s
budget was obviously meager, the production is fittingly seedy, and the cast of
mostly TV veterans doubles its value. Kitt’s Lola—a drag queen in the book but
more ambiguous here—is almost single-handedly worth the price of admission. Carroll,
a character actor perhaps best known today as the voice of Ursula in Disney’s The
Little Mermaid, takes what could easily be described as The Shelley Winters Role and makes the character Tangerine her own. The least interesting performances are by Collins and Gregory, but then they are saddled with Butterflies’ least
interesting characters. Though screenwriters Tony (Point of Terror) Crechales and George (The Killing Kind) Edwards reign in the book’s long-winded
dialog, they also water down its gay appeal and any potential the movie had of
becoming a camp classic. And forget any sexy fun. The movie’s one (one!) sex
scene is fairly tepid, with only Gregory showing any skin. Despite everyone lusting after Numie,
Collins, who sort of resembles Nathan Fillion in his Firefly days,
seldom even takes off his shirt, let alone his pants.
Butterflies in Heat was released on video in 1986 under the title Tropic of Desire—“not to be confused with the same-named porno movie,” the IMDb trivia page cheekily warns. Likely anyone renting the porn movie by mistake would’ve been less disappointed. At least that Tropic of Desire delivers what it promises; not so this cock tease of a movie.
