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House of Psychotic Women
Expanded Edition: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films
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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.
See the publisher website: FAB Press
> On a related topic:
New Blood in Contemporary Cinema (2020)
Women Directors and the Poetics of Horror
Attack of the Leading Ladies (2018)
Gender, Sexuality, and Spectatorship in Classic Horror Cinema
Men, Women, and Chain Saws (2015)
Gender in the Modern Horror Film
Grande Dame Guignol Cinema (2009)
A History of Hag Horror from Baby Jane to Mother
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