Matchbox Cine + Abertoir present House of Psychotic Women in Cardiff - this event took place in November 2022.
Renowned writer, curator and director Kier-La Janisse is joining Matchbox Cine for a UK tour in support of a 10th anniversary expanded edition of her seminal book, House of Psychotic Women, subtitled an ‘autobiographical topography of female neurosis in horror and exploitation films’. Janisse’s ground-breaking mix of keen critical analysis and clear-eyed, thoroughly compelling memoir inspired a generation of critics, programmers and film-makers. The influential tome has also played no small role in canonising a range of obscure, fringe and forgotten genre titles, many now considered essential.
Abertoir is teaming up with Matchbox for the Cardiff leg of the tour to present another very special team up: Kier-La will be joined by Alice Lowe for a screening of her a pitch black, wryly British comedy, Prevenge, followed by a discussion and Q&A.
Prevenge follows Ruth, a pregnant woman on a killing spree. It’s her misanthropic unborn baby dictating Ruth’s actions, holding society responsible for the absence of a father. The child speaks to Ruth from the womb, coaching her to lure and ultimately kill her unsuspecting victims. Struggling with her conscience, loneliness, and a strange strain of prepartum madness, Ruth must ultimately choose between redemption and destruction at the moment of motherhood.
Kier-La Janisse is a film writer, programmer, producer and founder of The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies. She is the author of House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (2012), A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi (2007), and has been an editor on numerous books including Warped & Faded: Weird Wednesday and the Birth of the American Genre Film Archive (2021), Yuletide Terror: Christmas Horror on Film and Television (2017) and Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s (2015). She was a producer on David Gregory’s Tales of the Uncanny (2020) and wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021) for Severin Films, where she is a producer and editor of supplemental features. She is currently at work on several books including a monograph about Monte Hellman’s Cockfighter. For more see kierlajanisse.com
The House of Psychotic Women UK Tour is presented by Matchbox Cine as part of In Dreams Are Monsters: A Season of Horror Films, a UK-wide film season supported by the National Lottery and BFI Film Audience Network. indreamsaremonsters.co.uk
