LILA (Mantis in Lace, 1968; d. Wm Rotsler, w. Sanford White)

"You’re not the 1st man I’ve turned on" double entendre as stripper (who stays in bikini for 1st dance: "split" personality; madness/complex not yet exposed, she agent of same) Lila (for Lilith, Adam’s willful 1st mate) picks up hippie Tiger (for whom she throws over macho aggressor: earringed T borderline psychological agent) + takes him to father's warehouse "pad" (unconscious storehouse of memory, containing scant material [as her underpopulated mind]: candles [muted, natural illumination of unconsc], mattress [sleep, + sexual nature of complex], record player [fugue state centered on alternative-title song: women’s inherited vagina-dentata self-image + hidden power, too; echo-effect in that song written by Tiger/Vic Lance, he about to pay price for projections] + empty cardboard boxes [where bodies stashed: crude, generic "container" for disassembled + badly pkgd parts, à la film/dream]); delays sex for repeat of opening dance (reiterative compulsion acting out private script: is act seduction, or expression of innate sexuality misinterpreted as same, performance fair warning no one heeds), her LSD (aka sleep, mind-opening drug hippies themselves, changing world for film’s subsequent parade of squares as well as its middle-aged makers)-induced confusion of his i.d. (interchangeable archetype of predatory Man, pawing her selfishly + impatiently) driving her to stab him w/ screwdriver (ritually killing man "above" her wmn rehearsing coming out from under masculine domination) + dismember w/ meat cleaver (analyzing: "breaking down," Self made androgynous-ambiguous as gateway to reconstruction at end of men’s long dominion), entire sequence avoiding graphic nudity (character/pathology still hidden/"respected" by camera: point in their coupling [commingling: coming together of worlds], not our seeing it).

Cop duo (to match schizo Lila: psychic agents investigating inner split) pick up case same time middle-aged psychologist (a "lay analyst" another dbl entendre: studying complex manifested in or by sexuality; need to couple then literally "split" stereotypical male inability to establish relationship w/ wmn/own femininity) becomes next pickup (hippie opening door, he going thru), attending strip clubs as part of research (subject voyeurism: men’s need to objectify wmn [communally: male society based on heterosexuality/objectification], ostensibly in pwr-position but basically impotent) as cops assume same beat (performing identical function on different levels, psych't spiritual/psychological, cops physical/intellectual); she topless this time (as in club: complex revealing self under investigative eye [during – psych’l – storm]), parroting hippie’s dialog (she reflection of men's fantasies) + replaying dance/seduction (ritual reenactment post-traumatic fugue-state rehearsing alt-title i.d.) before bad trip again results in butchery (men’s self-obliviation as wmn gains pwr, her pharmaceutical ego-negation à la men's climactic copulatory [cf Liquid Sky, Lila’s hyperintellectualized remake (itself grindhouse rip of ’58 Screaming Mimi)], only dissolving of sperm cell into ovum [man's abandonment to the fem] creating new life).

Clueless cops (befuddled conscious "authority" in sleep) investigate 2nd corpse (c-box w/ bloody limb sticking out art piece: dreams similarly confused + disconnected bundle of clues piercing into day-life, like baffling gift), assuming killer 2B male (flipside of misogyny, businesslike precinct opposite orgiastic club); harassed by superego/chief while Lila’s mean-drunk new pickup (cf cooled-out hippie + fatherly psych: doors open now to underlying primal hostility on all levels) pays for rape attempt (furious over her trying to control seduction: impatience w/ dance-ritual disinterest in her self/expression – beside point of his domination/supremacy), aftermath discovered by "real" estate agent (feminine conduit btwn dream + waking life) showing warehouse to potential buyer (not Lila’s father’s place after all: she vagabond psychic material never given definite location/i.d. – product of male psyche).

After non-sequitur "romantic" interlude (à la backstage sequence w/ 2 cynical ecdysiasts sharing joint: intimate relational center beyond darker issues) w/ barkeep + wannabe stripper (brightly lit rendezvous minus psychedelic distractions of Lila-couplings, romanticized casting-couch exploitation as "honest"/egalitarian as film’s sexual politics get), cops intensify clubhopping (lucid dreaming, where consciousness active during reverie), intuitive one (fem side, whose unexceptional wild hunches pan out because drama taking place in his mind) spotting Lila onstage + nearly questioning her (for no reason; erotic attraction as to "masc" fem counterpart [in the modern remake, they'd have a psychic link], desire for interview as for inner-view, connecting w/ lost part of self turned violent out of neglect + acting up to gain attention).

Stake out warehouse where she brings reluctant, gun-totin’ (phallic dream-consciousness, converging w/ similarly endowed cops) liquor store mgr (abstinent meter of intoxication/unconsc’ss, polar opposite of hard-on drunk/unconsc + opening soft-male drug-taking/dispensing hippie: dream rousing to consc’ss) mistaken for killer (threat not unconsc'ss itself but what attends it) + shot (return to consc’ss), confused Lila grabbing cleaver (she agent of separation/diffusion) + subdued (beginning of reintegration once bad elements in self weeded out), hustled into squad car in ironic ending, still believed innocent (absolved of projections).