MANTIS IN LACE (1968)

 WHAT BOOK WAS IT IN WHICH I READ ABOUT THIS MOVIE???

Actually I think it might've been the first issue of REALMS OF NIGHT.  Anywho, it sounded intriguing enough to make me seek out an old DVD snapper case copy from Something Weird Video which was at least 20 years old.  But I got one (for pretty cheap) and watched it.  Am I glad I did?  Weeeeeeeeeellllllllllllll that's a little difficult to pin down.  Yes, I'm glad I saw it.  No, it's not even remotely good.  It's terrible, in fact.  But I knew it would be going in.  William Rotsler is the director and he specialized in soft core and hard core sleaze which probably played in grindhouses on 42nd Street in the 70's.   So this is the perfect movie for Something Weird to have released on DVD. 

It's alternate title is "LILA"; unimaginatively after the lead character.  Lila (Susan Stewart)  is a stripper.  We know this because the first 10 minutes of the film is a striptease number.  Topless only, of course.  This was followed by YET ANOTHER topless dancer for another 5 or so minutes.  I suppose this was hot stuff in 1968 but now it's just boring.  Where's the murder and mayhem?!?!?!  Well, we do eventually get there.  Lila takes a randy guy home to a warehouse she either lives in or merely frequents a little too often.  Lila is a fan of LSD and she and her guy imbibe.  After quite a long while of teasing the guy, they finally get down to it but halfway through Lila suddenly starts having a bad trip and murders him with a screwdriver.  I'm not quite sure if it was a flat-head or a Phillips but I'll look closer on a rewatch. 

She chops the guy up and dumps him out on a riverbank inside a cardboard box she got from the warehouse.  This is, in its entirety, the plot of the film.  Topless dancing, Lila takes a guy to the warehouse, they get it on and she murders the guy with another garden tool halfway through.  One guy she kills with a hoe (without any sense of irony here).  There are a couple of cops who are basically incompetent but keep on investigating each dismembered corpse in a cardboard box they come across.  Actually, the two guys who play the cops are the best actors in the movie and I really enjoyed their scenes.  Other than that, this was quite a slog and the silly, DRAGNET-like assumption that LSD causes you to murder people was typically laughable.   Nope, I can't recommend this one unless you're morbidly interested in endless scenes of tame topless dancing with a little murder interspersed.