These Pathetic Histories of Women Contaminating The Universe: Kier-La Janisse’s ‘House of Psychotic Women’ 10 Years On
I am typing this on a day unlike any other day of the year. October 21 is the day 19 years ago my physically and psychologically abusive stepmother died in a car accident. It’s the day 8 years ago that I was raped by a stranger in a dorm room on MIT’s campus. It is strange to type that with such ease. But having just finished the expanded edition of House of Psychotic Women by Kier-La Janisse this morning, it seems entirely natural to tear open such a fiercely protected wound.
That is the kind of self-reflecting and self-immolating behavior the book inspires. The full title of Janisse’s masterpiece is House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis In Horror and Exploitation Films. Of the 15 words there, topography may be the most important. It draws forth imagery of the rocky terrain of maps, lakes and oceans, white mountain peaks and desolate tundras. But rarely pictured is the definition of topography as it relates to anatomy: the distribution of parts or features on the surface of or within an organ or organism.
This is no simple tome of film theory. It is as much a memoir as it is a psychology textbook, as much confession as it is Bible. The book is imbued with pain, a sense of meandering—like Janisse’s early life as a troubled adoptee in and out of foster homes and institutions. It moving through narratives and themes that can only make sense in the exploitation films she would later bring to the public consciousness decades after their releases.
The Bodily Expression Of Unspeakable Distress
House of Psychotic Women begins with Janisse’s birth in Winnipeg, “an isolated city in the dead centre of Canada known for its long, harsh winters and its citizens’ tragic propensity for alcoholism and violent crime.” She was adopted soon after. What follows is her recollection of a fateful night in which her mother was raped, an act she believes she witnessed at six years old. But Janisse admits she and her mother may be unreliable narrators in this story. She punctuates that point by doing a deep-dive into the controversial film The Entity starring Barbara Hershey as a woman who believes she is being beaten and raped nightly by a ghost.
This sets the stage for the rest of the book, a recounting of her life as it relates to the female neurotics depicted in the films she would find at the video store. The scope and intensity of Janisse’s knowledge may actually be unmatched. Her ability to relay her own story through so many works of fiction is an intimidating and necessary gift. Her mother’s transformation from medicated housewife to a woman in the throes of psychosis is told through the actresses of exploitation films who are her physical and/or emotional doppelgängers; Mia Farrow in The Haunting of Julia (1977), Mimsy Farmer in the works of Dario Argento, Armando Crispino, and Francesco Barilli, Anita Strindberg in Sergio Martino’s Gently Before She Dies (1972).
Give Me The Crazy Ones And Let’s Make A Suicide Pact
Janisse admits to things most would not, a startlingly honest portrait of her life. As a teenager, Janisse bounced around from group homes, foster homes, and institutions. At the age of 18, she moved into a basement apartment. There she slept in a casket given to her by an escape artist who no longer had use for it. At one point in her youth, she was abandoned by her boyfriend on a concentration camp tour for stealing a piece of rubble as a souvenir. In her teens and 20s, she is violent, jealous, and lost. She is what the Internet would call problematic. She is, in the context of exploitation film, what viewers may call riveting or confusing. To read a Letterboxd review of Janisse’s early life, you may find a barrage of one-stars or five-stars, and likely nothing in the middle. Simply put: Kier-La Janisse is an entirely complex and complicated person, and she makes no effort to hide it.
In the introduction to this new expanded edition of House of Psychotic Women, she writes:
“The text remains unchanged from how it appeared on release… It was imperative to me that the book remain as it existed then, a piece of its time and a document of where I was as a writer, a thinker, an ‘expert,’ a person. […] It does not stand as the final word on anything except for how homicidal I was or wasn’t on a certain day when I wrote about a certain film.”
The Crying Woman Is A Scheming Woman
“Unlike her comparatively-lauded male counterpart—’the eccentric’—the female neurotic lives a shamed existence. But the shame itself is a trap—on that is fiercely protected by men and women alike.”
Kier-La Janisse, Introduction to House of Psychotic Women
To read of her life written so fearlessly, with all its admitted inconsistencies, is to think about my own and what I try to conceal personally and professionally. I may be open about being a suicide attempt survivor. But I might not relay the taste of black charcoal down my throat to soak up the overdose in my belly. Or the fact that my nickname on the adolescent psych unit was Frankenstein because of how gorily stapled my attempt wound was. I may say I attend therapy weekly. But I might not tell you I’ve been institutionalized five times in my life, and suspect I will probably end up institutionalized again someday in an acute episode of terror.
Something inside me says I cannot be considered a serious, reliable, or responsible professional if I’m open about these things. Indeed, the world gives us that message every day, even in genre writing. But Kier-La Janisse’s work is a marriage of those things that make every horror lover’s pulse quicken: brutal honesty, critical thought, and a wealth of knowledge down to the minutia. Janisse writes: “[There is] a theatre in which horrible truths are exposed to the audience. Things we don’t want to see, but which break down the barriers that conceal the truth from our falsely constructed realities.”
The book begins and ends with Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession (1981). Isabelle Adjani’s character Anna is a wild and writhing thing, speaking in riddles and metaphors that rarely make sense to the viewer. She gives birth to a monster son-lover that she must destroy (and is her destruction). Possession has recently had a resurgence of interest and is an oft-sought-after film for physical media collections. Janisse has had a hand in the renewed interest of this film and many like it. She ran the CineMuerte film festival for 7 years and is the founder of the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Film Studies. And, it now has branches in Los Angeles, New York City, and London. In 2021, she wrote, directed, and produced the critically acclaimed Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror.
Perhaps my neuroses will likewise not keep me from great things.
Any Sign Of Female Protest Concerning Her Role In Society
I requested my copy of House of Psychotic Women with the intention of writing a simple review and recommendation of the content. I had never read it before, though it had been on my to-read list for quite some time. And I was lured by the promise of a compendium of exploitation films.
The experience of reading House of Psychotic Women was unlike any I had ever felt before, and unlike anything I suspect I’ll ever feel again. In that regard, I must wholeheartedly recommend it. Over half the book features rare poster art, film stills, and film reviews written by Janisse. The bonus content in the expanded edition includes over 100 additional film reviews, mostly of films that have been released since the book’s publication in 2012.
Kier-La Janisse is a rare thinker; complicated, eccentric, perhaps even what most would ungraciously call insane. I would very much like to meet her one day.
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