By Kier-La Janisse
I first knew of Kier-la Janisse when her Cinemuerte festival launched a few years after I finished film school. I remember attending screenings at the Blinding Light Cinema in Gastown, though not exactly what I saw. I do remember going to a rare screening of Zulawski’s Possession as well as a screening of Female Convict 701: Scorpion, both organized and introduced by Janisse before the audience. I can’t find online info about them (back then events weren’t really posted online!), but I believe Possession screened in Gastown and Female Convict screened at the Vogue theatre on Granville.
Obvs back then I didn’t realize how special and unique those screenings were. Until I read her 2012 memoir, House of Psychotic Women, I didn’t realize how much horror movies had shaped Janisse’s life into the singular individual she is today. Perhaps more accurately, it was more how the trajectory of Janisse’s early life had shaped her appreciation and fascination for horror and exploitation films.
And of course, Zulawki’s Possession was the film that first sparked Janisse’s obsession with horror and female psychology.
“In that first half Janisse circles back again and again to Andrezj Zulawski’s 1981 Possession, obsessed and enraptured by its “hypnotic cinematography” and “deep blue hues.” The film becomes an anchor for much of the analysis, the film that sparked a lifelong passion — her interest is hardly academic, no mere formal fascination. In an early passage that displays her insightful, potent prose, she writes,
‘There was something terrible in that film, a desperation I recognized in myself, in my ability to communicate effectively, and the frustration that would lead to despair, anger and hysteria.’ — House of Psychotic Women
Because of who she is, it’s no surprise that Janisse couldn’t write an ordinary memoir either. The full title is House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films, and it truly is a unique hybrid of autobiographical and scholarly film analysis seen through a very distinct personal lens. In the decade since its publication, there hasn’t been anything else quite like this book either.
Janisse’s early life was, unsurprisingly, marked by family dysfunction, instability, trauma and much unhappiness. You can check all the tumultuous factors off the list: being adopted, abandoned by an older stepsister who ran away, her parents separating when she was young. One time, she even witnessed her single mom being assaulted at home. There’s more, but I’m not going to list out all the awful things that happened because those things don’t entirely define a person. However, Janisse was honest enough to admit that for the longest time, she did let those bad things define her and almost ruin her life. At some point, she managed to pull herself together and make something of herself. Her love of cinema helped her find a job at Black Dog Video and that support system allowed her to eventually finish her education and go from there.
This review sums up HOPW well:
“Horror films reflect some core truths about the way we live, the trials and tribulations that we endure, and our individual relationships with a world that seems, at best, indifferent to our well-being and, at worst, actively hostile. Not everyone feels this way, but a lot of us do. And there’s a deep satisfaction in seeing your experiences and perceptions honestly reflected back at you, even if said experiences and perceptions aren’t totally pleasant. It’s a reminder that although the world can be a hard place, you’re not alone in it.”
Olman and I actually saw Janisse at the 2012 Fantasia film festival when she was there to launch House of Psychotic Women. She was sitting quietly in the main lobby of the Concordia Hall building with modest stacks of HOPW laid out on the table before her. At the time, she looked like how I remembered her from my days in Vancouver. Yet it didn’t even occur to me to purchase her book! Fortunately, Olman keyed into the unique opportunity by purchasing the book from Janisse herself. Like me, Conan has the tsundoku-esque habit of buying nice books and forgetting to read them, so House of Psychotic Women sat unread in a shelf for years.
At some point, I remembered the book and started reading it around 2019, though very intermittently. During the 2020 pandemic, my reading pace picked up again, and my film consumption sky rocketed. Thanks to Shudder, Criterion and other creative ways of acquiring digital meda, I was able to watch obscure horror films that have been on my list for years and years, ie. Marnie, Secret Ceremony, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, The Witch Who Came from the Sea, L’intérieur. I wanted to read about the films I watched and it made sense that I’d seek out HOPW again. Olman was happy to see me reading HOPW as he didn’t think he'd ever get around to reading it. So I now claim HOPW as mine!
Although I finished the memoir over a week ago, there's a film compendium that takes up about 40% of the book’s content. Janisse provides a short review for each film and there are, at minimum, 150 films! It’ll take me a while to read through them all, which I want to do and savour.
Here’s one I found amusing for Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972, Italy):
“It has often been said that the stringent Catholicism of Italy and Spain contributed greatly to the luridness of their horror films, the sleaziness of their comedies, the predatory nature of their thrillers. It’s no surprise: the Catholic religion is a staunch advocate of repression and self-denial, which usually just results in exactly the kind of sexually transgressive behaviour they are trying to warn against.”
Reading HOPW has definitely influenced the films I’ve been watching during the pandemic. And it’s been interesting to read Janisse’s take on films that I’ve already watched, not to mention a slew of new films to put on my to watch list as I make my way through the compendium.
As I’m writing this, I realized Janisse also made her first documentary, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror, which I missed at 2021 Fantasia.
It’s just as well, because when I saw that it was (thankfully) also available on Shudder, it’s well over 3 hours long! I've started to watching it piecemeal and it’s packed with a LOT of films, most of which are quite obscure and/or forgotten, most of which I’ve never heard of and will probably never set eyes on.
Then not long after, I got sidetracked with Eli Roth’s History of Horror episodes, which are geared towards more mainstream horror afficianados. It didn’t take me long to finish all three seasons, while I’m not even hallway through Janisse’s Folk Horror doc. Shame! But to my pleasant surprise, Janisse was featured as a talking head expert on Roth’s series! So it was fantastic to see her there with the likes of Roth, Tarantino, and Stephen King.
P.S.
Fantasia Film Festival announced their 2022 lineup. Kier-La will be back to launch and promote an expanded edition of HOPW to celebrate its 10th anniversary of publication! It features a new cover (which Janisse prefers), reviews for 100 new films, and more glossy colour photos of cinematic female psychoses. If you pre-order, you’ll receive the limited edition with a CD of Janisse reading The Yellow Wallpaper set to originally composed music.
