PlatinumRead Just so...so bad

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Lancoor A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

Delight Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

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.

Woodyanders Sweet stripper Lila (adorable redhead Susan Stewart, who has a really cute funny foreign accent) gets turned on to LSD by a creepy hippie guy. The bad acid causes Lila to go lethally bonkers. She takes various lecherous men to her grotty warehouse love nest, kills them, and hacks up their bodies with a meat cleaver. Director William Rotsler gleefully pours on the abundant gratuitous nudity and tacky gory violence (the blood looks just like red paint -- and probably was exactly that). Laszlo ("Easy Rider") Kovac's garish, kinetic cinematography, a couple of lengthy simulated sex scenes, the wonderfully wiggy psychedelic freak-out sequences (poor Lila has horrific visions of a laughing fat jerk holding bananas and dollar bills!), some pot smoking, the hypnotically funky theme song, and the hilariously dated hip slang ("Groovy pad you got here; it's a little kinky, but it's out of sight") are all completely far-out, man! Busty'n'lusty 60's skinpic starlet Pat Barrington of "Orgy of the Dead" fame performs two sizzling hot bump'n'grind numbers on stage to a rowdy crowd. Russ Meyer film regular Stuart Lancaster has a nice part as a wannabe helpful psychologist. An enjoyably sleazy soft-core psycho sexploitation hoot.

shepardjessica A terrible exploitation film of the late 60's with a sweet actress in the lead role. The cops are really terrible (as actors and cops). The only standout part of the film is the presence of the incredible Pat Barrington. There's nobody quite like her. This director has made better films (The Agony of Love). The sound quality is particularly bad.The title song is excruciatingly awful as is most of the muzak. As I mentioned, if not for Pat Barrington, this would be totally unwatchable. Ms. Barrington should have played the lead instead of playing the belly dancing stripper. She has attributes the other females in the cast do not possess.