House of Psychotic Women (Paperback): An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films

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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. Perhaps the audio commentary, provided by actor Kamila Wielebska, would have deepened my appreciation for some of the themes, but I unfortunately didn't have time for a second watch. As with "Identikit," this film did make me want to learn more about Polish playwright, author, and screenplay co-writer, Krystyna Kofta. While the ideas never quite coalesced for me, there was a valiant attempt to craft Isabelle as a character who challenges social taboos, which I respect. Kofta is making me reconsider my policy on thin eyebrows. "Footprints" I like to think of Alice (Florinda Bolkan) as Elena Ferrante's batshit alter ego. The Glass Ceiling; All the Colors of the Dark; Gently Before She Dies; Anima Persa; Let's Scare Jessica to Death; The Reincarnation of Peter Proud; The Haunting of Julia

House of Psychotic Women | Kier-La Janisse | Woman in Revolt House of Psychotic Women | Kier-La Janisse | Woman in Revolt

Written and directed by ardent feminist artist Jane Arden, though often times completely improvised, 1972's The Other Side Of The Underneath is a filmed adaptation of the artist's own theatrical production, A New Communion For Freaks, Prophets And Witches. Suffield, Trevor (2010-03-25). "Mar 2010: Horror film course promises to be a real scream". Winnipeg Free Press . Retrieved 2021-06-19. She contributed to Destroy All Movies!! The Complete Guide to Punks on Film ( Fantagraphics, 2011), Recovering 1940s Horror: Traces of a Lost Decade (Lexington, 2014) The Canadian Horror Film: Terror of the Soul ( University of Toronto Press, 2015) and We Are the Martians: The Legacy of Nigel Kneale (PS Press, 2017).The film contains graphic scenes of gore and nudity, and was rated R in the U.S. under its slightly edited version titled House of Psychotic Women. House of Doom was the even more heavily edited version that was released direct to U.S. TV. Jimmy McDonough, author of The Ghastly One: The 42 nd Street Netherworld of Director Andy Milligan and Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography

House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of

GROUNDBREAKING…House of Psychotic Women is one of the most influential pieces of film analysis of the 21st century. Kier-La Janisse is a legend in the genre community.”-Screen Anarchy In 2014, she created the publishing imprint Spectacular Optical. Through this imprint she co-edited (with Paul Corupe) and published the anthology books KID POWER! (2014), Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s (2015), and Yuletide Terror: Christmas Horror on Film and Television (2017), as well as publishing Lost Girls: The Phantasmagorical Cinema of Jean Rollin (2017). Janisse has done the art direction and layout for all Spectacular Optical publications. An expanded, tenth anniversary edition is now available. The text of the memoir remains unchanged, but the new copy comes with an updated preface and one hundred new films in the appendix, including " Always Shine" (2016), " Braid" (2018), and " Raw" (2017). You don't need to rush out and buy an updated copy if you already own one from 2012, but definitely grab this 2022 version if you're buying for the first time or need to replace a copy that's been beaten to shit over the years. "Always Shine" is one of those movies where the vibes are immaculate.

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It all started with Possession. Zulawski’s film, formally speaking, is perfection – its deep blue hues, its labyrinthine locations, the hypnotic cinematography of Bruno Nuytten. But that’s not what drew me to return to it again and again. There was something terrible in that film, a desperation I recognized in myself, in my inability to communicate effectively, and the frustration that would lead to despair, anger and hysteria.” The Piano Teacher (says Kier-La: “I have so much love for (Isabelle Huppert’s character) that it’s hard to even describe”; says me: brrr….) In his column in Gorezone #32, Tim Lucas called it “A groundbreaking book,” continuing to say that: “This is a rare work within the field, one that takes an almost novelistic leap of imagination in determining and recording its subject and collating its parts. The personal chapters are fascinating and harrowing, showing gifts for autobiographic writing not commonly found among film critics. Janisse proves an equally adept critic; her selection of films reveals a remarkably thorough immersion in her subject. She also deserves points for confronting the question about the subtle scars that we may invite by turning to such films for entertainment.” It’s all very odd. The narrative has a lot of loose ends and plot holes that are never quite satisfyingly resolved and we spend too much time watching Lise go shopping and berate restaurant and shop employees, but Taylor’s embracing the role wholeheartedly and showing a determined commitment to really just going for it with her performance make this not just watchable, but bizarrely compelling and, at times, even engrossing. Taylor’s wardrobe and garish hair and makeup is almost worth the price of admission alone but to see her chew the scenery and deliver some absurd dialogue relating to eating and orgasming is just the icing on this seriously bizarre cinematic cake. What I love most about this book is how well it works for casual viewers and horror fanatics alike. Janisse has an encyclopedic knowledge of horror that provides her the ability to pull obscure references and make challenging connections; however, she never leaves the reader in the dark, always providing enough context for anyone to follow along.

House of Psychotic Women: Expanded Hardcover Edition: An

Light on narrative but rife with unsettling depictions of insanity, the movie introduces us to a woman referred to as Meg The Peg (Sheila Allen, who will be recognizable to some as Number Fourteen on The Prisoner!) who suffers from schizophrenia. After a breakdown and a suicide attempt, she's put in an asylum located near a remote, rural village for psychiatric treatment and therapy. From here, we witness Meg's interactions with other inmates and witness various incidents and episodes all relating to madness and the exploitation of women. 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. In what remains the most obscure, bizarre and wildly misunderstood film of her entire career – and perhaps even ‘70s Italian cinema – Elizabeth Taylor stars as a disturbed woman who arrives in Rome to find a city fragmented by autocratic law, leftist violence and her own increasingly unhinged mission to find the most dangerous liaison of all. Academy Award® nominee Ian Bannen (THE OFFENCE), Mona Washbourne (THE COLLECTOR) and Andy Warhol co-star in this “unique, hallucinatory neo noir” ( Cult Film Freaks) – barely released in America as THE DRIVER’S SEAT – directed by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi(‘TIS PITY SHE’S A WHORE), adapted from the unnerving novella by Muriel Spark ( The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie) and featuring cinematography by three-time Oscar® winner Vittorio Storaro (APOCALYPSE NOW, THE LAST EMPEROR), now restored in 4K by Cinematheque of Bologna and Severin Films.Kier-La Janisse (born October 3, 1972) is a Canadian film writer, programmer, producer, and founder of The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies. Her best-known work as a writer is House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (FAB Press, 2012) which many critics consider an important milestone in both confessional film writing and the study of female madness onscreen. Video Watchdog’s Tim Lucas referred to it as one of the 10 “most vital” horror film books of all time, [1] and Ian MacAllister-McDonald of the LA Review of Books called it “the next step in genre theory, as well as the most frightening and heart-rending memoir I’ve read in years.” [2] Her debut feature as a filmmaker, the three-hour documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror, premiered at SXSW 2021 where it won the Midnighters Audience Award. [3] Film and event programming [ edit ] Each film is introduced by Janisse and comes with other special features, like audio commentary, interviews, video essays, and extended sequences. Anyone who likes a solid post-watch deep dive will find this box set invaluable, especially when paired with the book. If you want my two cents on each film, keep reading. "Identikit" Mona Washbourne and Elizabeth Taylor are an iconic pairing. Janisse is particularly engaged in discussing the rape-revenge sub-genre, and cites many examples. For her the pinnacle of these is Abel Ferrara’s Ms. 45, a tough watch psychologically (though not explicitly graphic to the degree of many other such films) but one that thinks through the tropes of these films much further than most. I saw this many years ago, kind of liked it but didn’t love it, but her analysis is interesting enough that maybe I should rewatch it. People love this book. Why? It talks about life and art in an unusual, provocative way. Kier-La Janisse doesn’t kid around. For her, movies are a matter of life and death. House of Psychotic Women is an original, singular creation. Nothing like it existed before and certainly nothing since. Cherish this book, argue with it, throw it against the wall. But let it get under your skin… invade your bloodstream. It may change you.” The other feature I want to call direct attention to is the 135-minute interview with artist/actress Penny Slinger at the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies. It’s similarly exhaustive and involves a conversation with Slinger, charting her work with Jane Arden and her own interests in sexual surrealism. This feature makes the set valuable alone.

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Released domestically in North America under the alternate title of The Driver's Seat, Giuseppe Patroni Griffi's 1974 film, Identikit, was based on a novel by Muriel Spark and stars Elizabeth Taylor in the lead role as a woman named Lise. She's a demanding woman and not always the friendliest person to be around. Directed by Grzegorz Warchol from a screenplay he co-wrote with Krystyna Kofta and released in 1986, I Like Bats (Lubie nietoperze in its native Poland) tells the rather odd story of a beautiful young woman named Izabela (Katarzyna Walter who, oddly enough, showed up briefly in the 2004 Steven Seagal movie Out Of Reach) who works in an antique shop run by her aunt. The book was first released with endorsements from Fritz the Cat director Ralph Bakshi (“ God, this woman can write, with a voice and intellect that's so new.”) and The Wasp Factory author Iain Banks (“ Fascinating, engaging and lucidly written: an extraordinary blend of deeply researched academic analysis and revealing memoir.”) [20] Playing out wish-fulfillment through fictional characters can save us from living out similar scenarios with our real bodies. Janisse has often talked freely about being a teenage delinquent, one who believes that watching films like “Over the Edge,” starring a young Matt Dillon, gave her pause. “There was a recognition there in terms of, ‘OK, I’m like this and it would be very easy for me to cross over into being very bad, but I have to make choices,'” she said. “You can get some vicarious thrill out of the fact that characters are living out this extreme fantasy, but you’re also able to reflect on the consequences.” She edited the book Warped & Faded: Weird Wednesday and the Birth of the American Genre Film Archive (Mondo, 2021). [18]In a very unsurprising move, Severin Films and Kier-La Janisse have bestowed this release with a long list of newly produced and archival features to not only add context to the films being presented but further the conversation about these rarities to keep them alive. Of the many interviews, commentaries and other supplements included, I do want to call out a newly produced 68-minute interview with Vittorio Storaro that’s included with the Italian Cut of Footprints. This interview is truly exhaustive, showcasing just how much of a talented workman Storaro started his career as and just continued to grow from there. His agility in the Italian film industry made him a huge asset to many American filmmakers, yet the man knows how to tell a good story with the best of them. In 2020, she began the podcast A Song From the Heart Beats the Devil Every Time, expanded from a proposed book project about cult kids film and television from 1965-1985. The podcast’s name is derived from the 1978 Nelvana Halloween special The Devil and Daniel Mouse, which is the subject of its first episode.