Gorgeous redhead Lila (Susan Stewart, whose acting career consisted largely of playing strippers and prostitutes, but who also did voice-work for Scooby-Doo) picks up men at the go-go palace she dances at, takes them to her groovy warehouse pad for LSD and sex, butchering them afterwards using a variety of sharp implements. She disposes of her victims' bodies by chopping them up with a meat cleaver, popping the pieces in a cardboard box, and dumping them. Meanwhile, two clueless cops attempt to solve the murders.
Mantis in Lace is a prime slice of sleazy psychedelic sixties sexploitation, the film delivering wall-to-wall nudity in the form of sexy strippers jiggling their bits to a baying audience of horn dogs and engaging in soft core nookie. In addition to all of the bare female flesh, the film offers fans of out-there entertainment a hilarious lexicon of hippie lingo (You're grooving, baby! Out of sight, man! Ow wow, oh wild!), a frustrating game of eight-ball where neither player knows the correct balls to play (guy pots a stripe on his break, and then pots a spot; Lila pots a spot, then goes for a stripe), and some trippy hallucinogenic imagery, plus a really dumb ending where the trigger happy cops mistake one of Lila's potential victims for the killer and shoot him dead.
Director William Rotsler allows every scene to go on for way too long and the murders themselves, while nasty in tone, are relatively gore-free, but I can't say that the film is ever boring: Lila and her sexy stripper pals see to that.
Mantis in Lace is a prime slice of sleazy psychedelic sixties sexploitation, the film delivering wall-to-wall nudity in the form of sexy strippers jiggling their bits to a baying audience of horn dogs and engaging in soft core nookie. In addition to all of the bare female flesh, the film offers fans of out-there entertainment a hilarious lexicon of hippie lingo (You're grooving, baby! Out of sight, man! Ow wow, oh wild!), a frustrating game of eight-ball where neither player knows the correct balls to play (guy pots a stripe on his break, and then pots a spot; Lila pots a spot, then goes for a stripe), and some trippy hallucinogenic imagery, plus a really dumb ending where the trigger happy cops mistake one of Lila's potential victims for the killer and shoot him dead.
Director William Rotsler allows every scene to go on for way too long and the murders themselves, while nasty in tone, are relatively gore-free, but I can't say that the film is ever boring: Lila and her sexy stripper pals see to that.