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

Summary

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.