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IMDbPro

Lila

  • 1968
  • R
  • 1h 27m
IMDb RATING
4.7/10
425
YOUR RATING
Susan Stewart in Lila (1968)
Slasher HorrorCrimeHorrorRomanceThriller

A topless dancer attracts, seduces, then murders the men she sleeps with. She does it with a twist, however; she kills them with garden tools.A topless dancer attracts, seduces, then murders the men she sleeps with. She does it with a twist, however; she kills them with garden tools.A topless dancer attracts, seduces, then murders the men she sleeps with. She does it with a twist, however; she kills them with garden tools.

  • Director
    • William Rotsler
  • Writer
    • Sanford White
  • Stars
    • Susan Stewart
    • Steve Vincent
    • James Brand
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    4.7/10
    425
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • William Rotsler
    • Writer
      • Sanford White
    • Stars
      • Susan Stewart
      • Steve Vincent
      • James Brand
    • 12User reviews
    • 21Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • Photos6

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    Top cast17

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    Susan Stewart
    • Lila
    Steve Vincent
    • Sgt. Collins
    James Brand
    • Lt. Ryan
    • (as M.K. Evans)
    Vic Lance
    • Tiger
    Pat Barrington
    Pat Barrington
    • Cathy
    Janu Wine
    • Angel
    Stuart Lancaster
    Stuart Lancaster
    • Frank
    John Caroll
    • Ben
    John LaSalle
    • Fred
    Hinton Pope
    • Chief Barnes
    Bethel Buckalew
    • Bartender
    Lyn Armondo
    • Real Estate Woman
    Norton Halper
    • Tenant
    Judith Crane
    • Dancer
    Cheryl Trepton
    • Dancer
    Paul Hunt
    Paul Hunt
    • Blond Audience Member
    • (uncredited)
    William Rotsler
    • Bearded Audience Member
    • (uncredited)
    • Director
      • William Rotsler
    • Writer
      • Sanford White
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews12

    4.7425
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    Featured reviews

    5BA_Harrison

    She mates and then she kills.

    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.
    2shepardjessica

    Psychedlic murder!

    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.
    5tbyrne4

    Disappointing outing from Rotsler

    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.
    8The_Void

    Nice and trashy little thriller!

    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!
    4ferbs54

    She Trips, She Flips....

    "Mantis in Lace" (1968) is, in four fairly equal quarters, a soft-core skin flick, a psychedelic drug movie, a slasher horror film AND a police procedural. In it, we meet Lila (Susan Stewart), a young and gorgeous topless dancer who takes LSD one night with a guy she's picked up. After hallucinating pretty severely for a while, Lila kills the young dude with a screwdriver and chops him to bits with a meat cleaver. This scenario is repeated three or four times while a pair of (surprisingly UNdorky) L.A. cops tries to track the maniac down. Yup, that's pretty much all this film has to offer. One of Lila's victims, I might add, is Stuart Lancaster, who might be a familiar face to all the Russ Meyer fans out there; another, a macho rapist, most certainly deserves to be diced at Lila's hands. The picture feels very padded with numerous topless dance numbers (the opulently cantilevered legend Pat Barrington looks pretty impressive, actually, doing a frenzied belly dance; come to think of it, she would do a bit of "tripping out" herself that same year in the film "The Acid Eaters"), long makeout scenes, a lovemaking bout between the topless club's manager and a job applicant that adds nothing to the plot whatsoever, and loads of colorful hallucinations. It has been lensed by Laszlo Kovacs, who would depict an even more harrowing lysergic experience in the following year's "Easy Rider." (Actually, I found the aural component of Lila's trips much more freaky than the visuals.) Sadly, the viewer never learns anything concrete about Lila's background, or why the drug sets her off the way it does; indeed, the only thing we can discover about her comes from the film's admittedly hypnotic theme song. Concluding with an ironic albeit extremely telegraphed ending, "Mantis in Lace" is ultimately a real mixed bag; a psychedelic psycho curiosity that should have been better. Oh...this Something Weird DVD features over 100 minutes' worth of alternate film footage. Far out, man!

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    Storyline

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    Did you know

    Edit
    • Alternate versions
      The version released by Something Weird video as "Mantis in Lace" is the longest, most complete version of the film, originally titled "Lila".
    • Connections
      Featured in Harry Novak's Boxoffice Bonanza of Sexploitation Trailers, Volume I (1992)
    • Soundtracks
      Lila
      Theme Song

      by Vic Lance

      Sung by Lynn Harper

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    Details

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    • Release date
      • March 7, 1969 (West Germany)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Lila: Mantis in Lace
    • Production company
      • Boxoffice International Pictures (BIP)
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

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    • Budget
      • $35,000 (estimated)
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

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    • Runtime
      • 1h 27m(87 min)
    • Sound mix
      • Mono
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.85 : 1

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