House of Psychotic Women

By Kier-La Janisse

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

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.

Named after the US-retitling of Carlos Aured's The Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll, House of Psychotic Women is an examination of these characters through a daringly personal autobiographical lens. Anecdotes and memories interweave with film history, criticism, and trivia to create a reflective personal history and an examination of female madness, both onscreen and off.

Contains mature themes.