House of Psychotic Women: Expanded Edition: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films

by Kier-La Janisse

Overview

HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN has attained canonical status, having ushered in a new way of writing about film. Kier-La Janisse’s acclaimed book is an autobiographical exploration of female neurosis in horror and exploitation films that examines hundreds of films through a daringly personal lens. In this pioneering work, anecdotes and memories interweave with film history, criticism, trivia and confrontational imagery to create a reflective personal history and a consideration of female madness, both onscreen and off.

Following the extraordinary success of its 10th anniversary expanded hardcover re-issue, which features new reviews of 100 more films – many of which were inspired in part by the book itself – and hundreds of new images, FAB Press have now published an affordable paperback edition.

Cinema is full of neurotic personalities, but few things are more transfixing than a woman losing her mind onscreen. Horror as a genre provides the most welcoming platform for these histrionics: crippling paranoia, desperate loneliness, masochistic death-wishes, dangerous obsessiveness, apocalyptic hysteria. Unlike her male counterpart - 'the eccentric' - the female neurotic lives a shamed existence, making these films those rare places where her destructive emotions get to play.

This sharply-designed book, including a 48-page full-colour section, is packed with 680 rare stills, posters, pressbooks and artwork throughout, that combine with family photos and artifacts to form a titillating sensory overload, with a filmography that traverses the acclaimed and the obscure in equal measure. Films covered include The Entity, The Corruption of Chris Miller, Singapore Sling, 3 Women, Toys Are Not for Children, Repulsion, Let's Scare Jessica to Death, The Haunting of Julia, Secret Ceremony, Cutting Moments, Out of the Blue, Mademoiselle, The Piano Teacher, Possession, Antichrist and hundreds more!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781913051341
Publisher:	FAB Press
Publication date:	08/01/2024
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	7.60(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Kier-La Janisse is a film writer, programmer, producer and founder of The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies. She is the author of A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi (2007) and has edited numerous books including Warped & Faded (2021), Yuletide Terror (2017) and Satanic Panic (2015). She was a producer on the film Tales of the Uncanny (2020) and wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021) for Severin Films, where she is a producer and editor of supplemental features.

Read an Excerpt

It all started with Possession. Zulawski’s film, formally speaking, is perfection – its deep blue hues, its labyrinthine locations, the hypnotic cinematography of Bruno Nuytten. But that’s not what drew me to return to it again and again. There was something terrible in that film, a desperation I recognized in myself, in my inability to communicate effectively, and the frustration that would lead to despair, anger and hysteria.

My relationship with this film caused me to look at what kinds of warnings – or in some cases reinforcements – I was getting out of other films in which disturbed or neurotic women figured greatly. Over the past ten years I started keeping a log of these films, accompanied by rambling, incoherent notes and occasionally wet pages. I have drawers full of these scribblings; they’re spilling out of manila envelopes in my closet, and they’re all pieces of a puzzle that I have to figure out how to put together. But my starting point was a question, and that question presented itself easily: I wanted to know why I was crazy – and what happens when you feed crazy with more crazy.

As with most female horror fans, people love to ask me what it is I get out of horror. I give them the stock answers: catharsis, empowerment, escapism and so on. Less easy to explain is the fact that I gravitate toward films that devastate and unravel me completely – a good horror film will more often make me cry than make me shudder. I remember someone describing their first time seeing Paulus Manker’s The Moor’s Head as so devastating they had to lie on the sidewalk when they exited the theatre. Now, that’s what I look for in a film.

Cinema is full of neurotic personalities, but I decided to focus on women because this is what I know. And again, I decided to focus on horror and exploitation films because this is what I know. Everything in my early existence – the Creature Feature double bills of old Hammer and AIP films, the Alice Cooper records and stage shows, Scooby-Doo, The Devil and Daniel Mouse and The Hardy Boys Mysteries – shaped me for this particular future. I was chauffeured into this dark terrain by my parents, but I stayed there because of something in myself. And that ‘something’ was decidedly female.

Editorial Reviews

"House of Psychotic Women is for the horror aficionado as well as the horror curious. Janisse weaves her own life into an intensely personal exploration of the genre, challenging the reader to reconsider the films in all of their complexity. I devoured this compelling, surprising, and moving book." — Molly Ringwald, actress, singer and author

"High Priestess of Horror Kier-La Janisse has crafted the definitive encyclopedia of female neurosis as depicted in horror cinema and the many ways it paralleled her own trauma zones. Beautifully written, extremely well researched and lush with gorgeous film stills and posters – a masterpiece." — Lydia Lunch, musician, poet, author & No Wave icon

"Fascinating, engaging and lucidly written: an extraordinary blend of deeply researched academic analysis and revealing memoir." — Iain Banks, author of The Wasp Factory

"People love this book. Why? It talks about life and art in an unusual, provocative way. Kier-La Janisse doesn’t kid around. For her, movies are a matter of life and death. House of Psychotic Women is an original, singular creation. Nothing like it existed before and certainly nothing since. Cherish this book, argue with it, throw it against the wall. But let it get under your skin... invade your bloodstream. It may change you." — Jimmy McDonough, author of The Ghastly One: The 42nd Street Netherworld of Director Andy Milligan

From the Publisher