JANISSE, Kier-La
House of Psychotic Women [Expanded 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.

Named after the U.S.-retitling of Carlos Aured’s Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll, House of Psychotic Women is an examination of these characters through a daringly personal autobiographical lens.

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!

[publisher's note]

Published by Fab Press, 2022
Film & Video