Horror Extreme Movie Catalog

3 stars for Mantis In Lace,4 for the rest of the disc. Lila! Get use to that tune,it'll probably stick with you forever. Every previous review has told all there is to know.I actually think the two cops are the best actors of the crew.
I watched it once,it took two attempts;got very bored and put it on pause. Watched it again and it grew on me. I'll have to be in a very strange mood to watch it again.
The extras are the good stuff. I think the cage girl is the original pole-dancer! The LSD film by the Inglewood cops is interesting,but the birth-defects pics ruined a very good..uh,mood.
My review is all over the place,but then again,so is this disc.

"Mantis in Lace" asks the question: Can a movie have too much topless go go dancing? In the case of this late `60s sexploitation epic, the answer is a resounding yes! To be fair, "Mantis in Lace" was made before the cinematic barriers came crashing down in the 1970s, so I guess jiggling mammaries were still considered pretty risqué. Yet I'm sure even the members of the raincoat crowd of 1968 had to be checking their watches halfway into this leaden mix of sex, LSD and murder.

As the go go dancer Lila ("Lila" was this movie's alternate title), Susan Stewart has a vague English (maybe Dutch?) accent, à la Dolly Read from "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls," and an acting style akin to John Waters' late star Edith Massey. After dancing her set, she picks up a "hippie" (you can tell he's a hippie because he's wearing a dorky earring that resembles a homemade Christmas ornament) and takes him back to a warehouse owned by her father. They drop acid and have tepid sex on a mattress, while Lila sees all the swirling colors that signify all cinematic acid trips of this time period. But when she thinks she's being force-fed bananas (?) she freaks and stabs her faux-hippie one-night-stand in the back with a screwdriver, then hacks him to bits with a meat cleaver that happens to be handy. Then it's time for more topless go go dancing! The whole movie follows this pattern: Lila dances, picks up a man, does acid, freaks during sex and kills him. In between the go go dancing and LSD carnage are scenes of two "Dragnet"-style cops investigating (poorly) the murders. There's also one "casting couch" scene, apropos of nothing, in which an aspiring stripper--who looks like Kate Mulgrew--has sex with a bar owner (the only scene to give a flash of female full-frontal nudity and a bare male backside). Through it all we repeatedly hear the theme song, "Lila," so hypnotically awful you'll remember it long after you've forgotten the movie.

Despite its problems, "Mantis in Lace" does have its charm. The camera work by Lazslo Kovacs is excellent, giving this cheap movie a more polished look than it deserves. Pat Barrington has a small part as a belly-dancing stripper, and while she's not a much better actress than Stewart, she's certainly a more interesting one. The movie's concept is a pretty inspired mix for its time, if only director William Rotsler had used the premise to its fullest potential, starting with a real script. The Something Weird DVD release features an alternate "LSD murder scene" that's a lot more interesting than the one in the final film. There also are 100 minutes of outtakes, and while their inclusion seems like a good idea, I defy anyone to sit and watch these scenes--which, other than featuring a bit more blood and yet another go go dancer, differ little from what's in the final cut--without hitting fast forward. Rounding out the extras are an LSD scare film, a tedious LSD-themed nudie loop/morality tale, and a short featuring a crazed-looking stripper writhing about in a bamboo cage.