tbyrne4 Fairly tame and unexciting, Mantis in Lace is about a stripper in a club who tries acid one night while out with some groovy cat and has a bad trip. She hallucinates weird lights and patterns on the guy's face. Then she stabs him repeatedly with a screwdriver. End of date. She proceeds to go find other guys and brings them back to her place and does the same to them. I was expecting more from this one. It's very, very low-budget, even by films of this type. The main actress isn't anything to write home about and the lensing by stud cinematographer Lazlo Kovacs isn't that hot. It also drags in a big way. This feels almost like a short that was padded to feature length.Film has none of the mind-bending visuals or stylistic flourishes of Rotsler's brilliant "Like It Is" which was also released in 1968.

Scarecrow-88 Cheeky smut is perfect entertainment for sleaze aficionados. Photographed by Bogdanovich's frequent cinematographer László Kovács whose experiments with psychedelic colors during Lila's(Susan Stewart)drug trips are quite an experience. The film concerns the homicidal tendencies of a stripper triggered by LSD during Lila's sexual confrontations with men in a candle-lit abandoned warehouse for rent. Lila picks up various males for whom she encounters at the club she works, an unusual assortment of men, who have no idea what lies in store for them as they take part in passionate love-making as she succumbs to possible past incidents which re-awaken as the LSD overtakes her senses. After stabbing the men she beds with a screwdriver, Lila chops their bodies up with a cleaver disposing of the corpses in cardboard boxes in the warehouse, leaving them in vacant areas. The film shows two weary detectives pressed into solving the serial killings, this rash of homicides is growing in number and Lila shows no signs of stopping. The acting is obviously sub-par with this dime-store cast of unknown faces and the dialogue leaves anything to be desired. Stewart, in the lead as Lila, is quite beautiful(..often bearing her breasts during rather lackluster dance-routines)yet rather vacuous. The film luridly shows the club crowd's enthusiastic reactions to the performance artists on stage as they bare their breasts for the public..László Kovács camera gets in very close, his eye-lens peering provocatively as the strippers' bodies move in various dance routines. This film made me feel like I was a paying customer..that was how the director and his photographer often focus completely for long periods on the strippers and their routines. This will definitely be embraced by that crowd who adores trash and twisted premises like this film has. There's a soft-core sequence between the club owner that Lila works for and a potential client that seems to be in the film merely to satisfy an audience looking for a sex scene. I wouldn't call this a good film, but I certainly think it achieves what it sets out for..giving a specific audience exactly what they crave. The abrupt ending leaves anything to be desired.

The_Void Well it's safe to say that Mantis in Lace doesn't have a lot in the way of a storyline. This is obvious from the outset as a sequence that should have took little over five minutes is dragged out to around half an hour, but the lack of plot line isn't important as William Rotsler's psycho thriller is really all about atmosphere. This film precedes a load of these films that were made in the seventies, and is certainly above average for its type. Most of the runtime is taken up by gratuitous nudity and phoney looking violence, as well as a fair helping of scenes involving drug use; and all of this is fine with me! The plot revolves around LSD and features a sweet young stripper who is picked up in a bar by a man. He gives her the drug and this begins a hallucinogenic nightmare as she promptly kills him and then proceeds to pick up other men from the club and take them back to her place, where they suffer a similar fate to her first 'boyfriend'. The twist is that she kills all of these guys with garden tools! There's also a rather lacklustre police investigation going on...Despite the slow pace and thin plot, the film is entertaining for fans of this sort of stuff. Director William Rotsler builds up a fabulous trash atmosphere, which benefits the completely trashy plot line. The film stars Susan Stewart, who perhaps isn't the greatest actress of all time; but she plays her part very well and gives the film the added benefit of some eye candy. She looks good without her top on. A lot of the film takes place inside a strip club, which is an excellent setting for a film like this. The comic relief comes from the two inept police officers, who spend more time coming up with silly theories and cracking jokes than they do actually investigating the crime. But then again, this wouldn't be much of a trashy thriller if it featured decent coppers! There are practically no surprises at all in the plot and it's always obvious what is going to happen - at least it is until the end when Mantis in Lace finally shows some ingenuity (but don't expect too much). Overall, this is a nice little thriller and comes highly recommended to fans of this sort of stuff!

Eegah Guy This is a film that takes all that was great about exploitation films in the 60s and mixes them into a heady brew sure to entertain any and all cinema deviants. Originally released in two versions (one for the sex crowd, one for the horror crowd), it's the lean and mean horror version that is the one to see. Unfortunately the version released onto DVD is the longer sexier version but some of the scenes from the horror version (an alternate psychedelic murder, splashing blood) are included as supplements. The sexier version of the film drags in many spots with extended dances in the nightclub scenes and a totally extraneous sex scene in the middle that brings the film to a dead halt. But still either version of this film is worth watching and cherishing by fans of 60s psychedelic cinema.