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

In 2012, a book debuted that would go on to canonical status and usher in a new way of writing about film. Kier-La Janisse’s HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN explored 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 an examination of female madness, both onscreen and off. 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