Description

House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (Expanded Edition) by Kier-la Janisse

Hardcover – Fab Pr – Oct 2022 – 448 pages

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, desparate lonliness, 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.

Named after the U.S> retitling of Carlos Aured’s The Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll, The House of Psychotic Women is an examination of these characters through a daringly personal autobiographical lens. Anecdotes and memories interweave with film history, criticism, trivia and confrontational imagery to create a reflective personal history and examination of female madness, both onscreen and off.

This sharply-designed book with a 48-page full-color section is packed with rare stills, posters, press books and artwork 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.

Filmes covered include:

• The Entity,
• Black Swan,
• Repulsion,
• 3 Women,
• The Corruption of Chris Miller,
• Singapore Sling,
• Christiane F.,
• Toys Are Not for Children,
• Let’s Scare Jessica to Death,
• The Haunting of Julia,
• Mademoiselle,
• Out of the Blue,
• Secret Ceremony,
• Cutting Moments,
• Dr. Jeckyll and His Women
• The Piano Teacher,
• Posession,
• The Brood,
• Antichrist
• and hundreds more!