It is a special experience led by a call girl of Manhattan (Elizabeth Taylor) by establishing a tragic relationship with a rich married man (Lawrence Harvey). It seems that this girl is still facing a different life and her desire to respect makes her re-examine her lifestyle again.
Under director Daniel Mann's guidance it is an extremely sexy and intimate film, but the intimacy is only skin deep, the sex only a dominating behavior pattern.
Once thought of as racy and adventurous in its treatment of sex, this turgid nonsense about a high-class whore with love in her heart has dated atrociously.
The dialogue is rough. Let's say O'Harrowing. And the ending is absurd. But so is most of it for that matter. It's the living it up that gets you in this film.
Though it's generally true that nothing dates faster than Hollywood's idea of what's daring, Butterfield 8 can be viewed as a fascinating artifact from the days when movie stars' offscreen myths were carefully woven into their on-screen roles.
"Mama face it, I was the slut of all time," Liz Taylor's hooker confronts her mother, and that's pretty much sums up the nature of this glossy, trashy melodrama that Hollywood used to make until TV appropriated the genre.
