Lila (1968) from Tuna
Lila (1968), aka Mantis in Lace is an exploitation quality titty film and less. Susan Stewart plays Lila, a stripper and wild flower child. She is in the habit of picking up a man at work, and taking him to a warehouse she has access to for sex. One night, her "date" gives her some acid. HUGE MISTAKE. She goes off on a "bummer," and stabs him to death with a screwdriver, than makes some structural changes to his anatomy with a cleaver.
At this point, she has found her thing -- dropping acid and hacking up lovers.

NUDITY REPORT
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In addition to Lila, there are several other strippers shown in two or three minute segments, The two unknowns are most likely Judith Crane and Cheryl Trepton, but there is no telling which one time wonder is which. The other strippers, Janu Wine and Pat Barrington round out the exposure. Unknown2 is rippled with cellulite, and provides the only full frontal in the film. Barrington and Wine are shown in a dressing room sharing a roach and rubbing each other with oil, and also perform on stage.

DVD info from Amazon.

  • Something Weird Video and Image Entertainment produced the DVD, and, I am sure, did their best with the transfer.

  • They also included a lot of extras, including out-takes, an alternate psychedelic murder scene, trailers, and a special anti-LSD film produced by a Southern California police department.
The film is dark, there is not a single person in the cast who can act, the pace is all wrong, the plot, as you can see, is merely an excuse to show nudity. I imagine the LSD was thrown in as "redeeming social merit." During the sex scenes, they spent minutes at a time showing the woman digging her fingernails into the mans back in close-up. Notice the top images. These were psychedelic hallucinations by Lila during sex.

The production budget was $35,000.00. I can't imagine how they wasted that much money. 17 IMDB readers have it way too high at 5.3/10. I imagine this was produced as adult drive-in fare, and probably made money.

The Critics Vote

  • no reviews

The People Vote ...

  • With their votes ... IMDB summary: IMDb voters score it 5.3, much too high!
IMDb guideline: 7.5 usually indicates a level of excellence, about like three and a half stars from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm watchability, about like two and a half stars from the critics. The fives are generally not worthwhile unless they are really your kind of material, about like two stars from the critics. Films under five are generally awful even if you like that kind of film, equivalent to about one and a half stars from the critics or less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.

My own guideline: A means the movie is so good it will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not good enough to win you over if you hate the genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an open mind about this type of film. C means it will only appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover appeal. D means you'll hate it even if you like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if you love the genre. F means that the film is not only unappealing across-the-board, but technically inept as well.

Based on this description, this film is a C. Assumimg that it is very lowbrow exploitation titty flick, it is a good example of that genre. If rated as a real movie, it would be much lower.

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