A Force to Be Reckoned With: Kier-La Janisse and Her 'House of Psychotic Women'

Let's face it, Kier-La Janisse is a force to be reckoned with.

Over the past 15 years, she has created the CineMuerte Horror Film Festival (Vancouver, BC, 1999–2005); founded the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies as well as the Blue Sunshine Psychotronic Film Center, Montreal's coolest micro-cinema (2010–2012); and programmed for the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema (Austin, TX, 2003–2007). That's in addition to working for the Fantasia International Film Festival (Montreal, QC), being the subject of the documentary Celluloid Horror (Ashley Fester, 2004), writing A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi (published by FAB Press) and contributing articles for Filmmaker magazine, Fangoria and Rue Morgue, among others. And this extensive list is only the tip of the iceberg that is this woman's achievements.

I first met Kier-La in 2009 when she generously agreed to contribute to my Bloody Breasts documentary webseries by letting me interview her amid the craziness that is the Fantasia Film Festival – she later moderated the panel about women horror filmmakers I organized in 2011 for the same festival – and we have since become friends. I have heard her talk, countless times, about an exciting and intriguing book she was writing about female neurosis in genre films that would draw from film studies, but would also be autobiographical.

This summer, the book in question, House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (published by FAB Press), was finally launched during Fantasia Fest. Of course, like anything Kier-La does, it wasn't an ordinary launch. Instead of the typical "let's gather and have a drink and maybe buy the book" type event, the House of Psychotic Women launch consisted of a series of screenings of some of the films covered in the book, introduced by Kier-La herself, during which audience members could buy a copy of the publication. For the Canadian launch during Fantasia, the following titles were programmed: Full Circle (a.k.a. The Haunting of Julia, Richard Loncraine, 1977), Possession (Andrzej Zulawski, 1981), Christiane F. (Uli Edel, 1981) and Dr. Jekyll and His Women (Walerian Borowczyk, 1981).

Unfortunately, given the length of the book (350+ pages), I can't offer you a full review as I haven't yet had the time to finish reading it. (I am still fully savoring every page!) Instead, Kier-La was generous enough to answer a few questions and shed some light on her latest project.

Kier-La, your book takes an interesting approach by focusing on the representation of psychotic women in genre films, which is arguably the antithesis of the typical gender studies analysis of the psycho-sexual dynamics of women as victims. What inspired you to focus on psychotic women?

At first, it was just because someone pointed out how many of my favorite films had these kinds of women in them, and so then I started to wonder why. After many aborted attempts to write the book from a more academic or objective standpoint, I finally realized that because the reason I am drawn to these characters is personal, that was the approach I had to take for the things I said to have any meaning. So, what it comes down to is just that I relate to the characters. They all either remind me of myself, my mother or my sister – or my relationships with them. That triangle is the real house of psychotic women.

You explore such a vast body of work, including films that span genres. Did you use any particular methodology when deciding which films you would or wouldn't include? Did you have a rigorous selection process?

There wasn't really a methodology, and every time I tried to create one, I would stray from it. The only real criteria was that I wanted the film to spend some time investigating the roots of that character's neurosis, or at least give us some clues about it. The idea that these characters were reacting to trauma was important. So I didn't include stock "sadistic" female villains unless we were given some way into the character's psychology. Most of the characters are sympathetic to me in some way. Certain classic films that are clearly not genre films but were important to future characterizations of female neurosis include Red Desert, Persona, The Snake Pit, Black Narcissus, etc. My own taste goes all over the map, but it's still a map, and things are connected.

There is a strong autobiographical angle to your book. Can you tell me more about that?

I've had a hard time communicating with people my whole life. I can't articulate things the way I mean to. I think a big part of why I write about the same things over and over again is because I never feel that the way I wrote it the first time was what I meant to say. I had more conventional nightmares as a kid, but as an adult all my nightmares are about not being able to talk, or being blind – not being able to connect with the world. I can feel it around me, and it can hurt me, but I have no agency within it. This feeling has led to a lot of my problems in relationships from my parents and siblings to friends, co-workers and boyfriends. I am constantly trying to assert myself, and so I project a very hostile energy, I think. I think I'm afraid of disappearing.

So, part of the book was to try to get all these things down, to create a document of my neurosis, and to see how it was affected by watching the same kind of behavior paraded in front of me in films. I realized how therapeutic watching these films really was for me, and once I sat down to analyze it, I could actually find specific things from my life that directly correlated with things in the films liked. I don't think this is especially unique, everyone likes the films they like because it triggers certain memories or pleasure centers for them, but I was watching all films that could be seen as triggering negative memories. But I think that was important, because it made me able to deal with those problems with some distance. I know there are people out there who are way more neurotic than me – I can still function in daily life – but I think any objective fairness I have in evaluating my own neuroses and to what extent they are to blame in the problems I have, comes from watching these films. I think I would be a lot worse off without them.

Was it challenging to know you were including so much of yourself in the book? Did you ever question this approach?

Yes, and there are many times I considered taking certain things out, feeling like maybe they weren't necessary to telling the story and that I was unnecessarily exposing myself to ridicule. But I left them in because I felt that, ultimately, they were relevant and, to be fair, I couldn't hang my mother's laundry out to dry without doing the same with myself.

I know you've been working on the book for quite some time. How do you feel now that it is done? Was it cathartic?

Yes and no – it was good to get it all out and finish a project that I'd been working on for so long, but it's not as though all those problems are solved now. It's funny; no one picks up on this, but all my immediate family members in the book are re-named after people from The Love Boat, which was a show I loved as a kid because all these people could go out into the middle of the ocean on a cruise for five days, wrestle with their problems and come back to the shore with everything fixed. I wish the book was like that, but it wasn't. A lot of the questions are still there, the idea of dealing with something with finality so that you can move on – I don't know if that really exists.

I know it's early to ask that, but what has the response to the book been like so far? I can imagine it must spark really interesting conversations…

I've heard hardly anything yet except from people I know personally who say they like it, so it's hard to say. I'll know in a month or so I guess! On the Rue Morgue Podcast, Stuart Andrews hinted that it seemed self-indulgent and narcissistic, which is probably totally true!

The book had a successful launch at the Fantasia Festival, where a series of films analyzed in the book were programmed as part of the fest. Next stop will be Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, which will follow the same model with a special "House of Psychotic Women" spotlight offering a phenomenal selection of titles. Knowing your background as a film programmer/curator, how much control do you have over which films gets programmed during these festivals? Again, given the incredible amount of films covered in the book, what influences your selections?

Actually, I've been lucky in that I've gotten to pick all the films, based on availability. I try to pick films that are exciting to me and that don't get screened often, if ever. In Austin, they're playing Karen Arthur's The Mafu Cage, which I'm really excited about. Some of the movies chosen for the retrospectives are not the films that get the most ink in the book, but I have to think about the audience – Antichrist, for example, is an important film in the book, but it's too recent to screen again at Fantastic Fest.

What is your next project? What would you like to work on next?

I'm working on some writing for other people's projects; Mario DeGiglio-Bellemare has asked me to write a chapter in a book on 1940s horror that he is co-editing, but I'm still evaluating whether I know enough about the period to do so. And I'm writing for a book that David Kerekes at Headpress is putting out on made-for-television films. Beyond that, my next personal project, aside from finishing a short film I should have finished over a year ago, is starting work on a new book called A Song From the Heart Beats the Devil Every Time, about children's programming in the counterculture era.

As an end note, who is your favorite psychotic woman?

Erica Kohut in The Piano Teacher. She is the perfect mix of debilitating repression and violent hysteria. She tries so hard to control herself and everything around her, but she just can't. And she's full of tiny, intricate neuroses. I just love her.

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I strongly urge any genre film fan to buy Kier-La Janisse's new book, House of Psychotic Women – or, better yet, go meet her in person if ever she stops by a festival near you – as it is one of the most refreshing approaches to a topic rarely explored in film studies. Kier-La's next stop is Toronto's Fan Expo this weekend, and then she'll be preparing for the American launch during Fantastic Fest, which also includes an exciting series of screenings. For those who can't make it, you can buy online the limited hardcover edition of the book, which includes a playable postcard (it works just like a record) of Charles Bernstein's "Somebody's Waitin' For You" from the film Pigs (1972) and gorgeous alternate cover art. The regular softcover edition will be available from FAB press on September 29, 2012.