#horror flim

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 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.

To mark its 10th anniversary, Kier-La Janisse and FAB Press have reteamed to produce an expanded edition the book, featuring new writing on 100 more films – many of which were inspired in part by the book itself – and hundreds of new images. This first pressing of the Expanded Edition has been issued as a large format hardcover.

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!