house of psychotic women expanded edition

Her subtitle, “An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films,” sounds a bit academic, but the approach is so much more unexpected and original.

When the Canadian writer, critic, historian and programmer Kier-La Janisse published “ House of Psychotic Women” 10 years ago, there was a new title to add to that list. Hoberman’s “Midnight Movies”-which in 1991 created a unifying context for the outré visions of rogue auteurs like David Lynch, Alejandro Jodorowsky and John Waters. Some all-time bangers include Amos Vogel’s indispensable “Film as a Subversive Art” (reissued last year by Jake Perlin’s Film Desk), Carlos Clarens’ “Crime Movies” and Jonathan Rosenbaum & J. Whether collections of essays, histories, or even intensively annotated catalogs, they read like literary equivalents of classic albums, compelling and standing up to repeat spins and needle drops, with expansive and idiosyncratic perspectives on often underappreciated genres, movements or cinematic outputs redefined-and made to feel newly discovered-through the writer’s own aesthetic prism.

There’s an unofficial shortlist of essential film-critic compendiums represented on my bookshelves.

House of psychotic women expanded edition