City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

House of psychotic women, an autobiographical topography of female neurosis in horror and exploitation films, Kier-La Janisse

eng

Includes bibliographic references and index

photographsillustrations

index present

non fiction

House of psychotic women

Kier-La Janisse

an autobiographical topography of female neurosis in horror and exploitation films

House of Psychotic Women is an autobiographical exploration of female neurosis in horror and exploitation films. 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. 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. 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