Kelly McNeely: And speaking of writing, as an anxious, neurotic woman myself, I absolutely loved your book, House of Psychotic Women. It’s absolutely fantastic. And I think it’s really interesting, we’ve sort of seen that archetype evolve and grow a little bit more recently with films like Midsommar, Mother!, The Babadook, Saint Maud and so on. Could you speak a little bit about the modern psychotic woman and why that trope or that theme is evergreen in horror?

Kier-la Janisse: In terms of why it’s evergreen, I think it’s just something where we’re still struggling. I mean, as much as we look at feminism having made huge strides, it’s constantly stepping back. It’s constantly being pushed back, and we’re constantly trying to have to reassert those things over and over again. Women have never really gotten away from all these stereotypes about being over emotional and hysterical, or you know, people being able to twist the things they do to, to manipulate them politically, a lot of anxieties that both men and women have. Anxieties that men have about not being able to understand women’s behavior, and so it just looks nuts to them. But then also a lot of women getting very frustrated that they’re not able to communicate the thing that they want. You know, it’s like, why can’t I be understood? Why? No matter how I phrase this, why can people not understand? It’s like I’m speaking gibberish or something, you know? 

I’m not saying that men don’t have the same. It’s not like there aren’t neurotic men that have all these same issues. I can only speak for myself, because I’m a woman, and I know other women. And so it’s easier for me to talk about these things or make generalizations or see patterns and stuff. So I think that part of why it exists as a sub genre is because it is something very horrific, the idea of not being able to be understood. The whole fear — that old story about somebody who goes into the insane asylum, and someone mistakes them for a patient. And as soon as you start protesting that you’re actually not a patient, it’s like, oh sure, oh sure you’re not a patient. 

And there are horror films about that exact thing, but that fear of you not being able to convince other people that you’re not crazy is something that I think a lot of women still deal with on a regular basis. Whether it’s in personal relationships, or work environments, or whatever. But then, as far as the kind of explosion of these movies, I honestly think that because of the book there’s been more movies like that. Because I think that — and not that I’m like, Oh, you know, I’m so influential or anything — it’s more that it was like, taking all these films that were not necessarily parts of the same conversation before, and putting them under this kind of umbrella of like, this is how all these films touch each other. So things like Morvern Callar would not be a film people would necessarily talk about next to The Devils or whatever. It’s like, obviously, there are connections there. But people didn’t really talk about the films in the same way. 

And I’m making a film about folk horror right now, and it’s actually kind of similar, the way that that term ends up bringing together a lot of things that you wouldn’t really see connecting otherwise. So I think that after that sort of categorization brought certain types of films together, and people were able to be like, oh, I actually like those kinds of films. Then people were being like, well, I want to make one — I like those kinds of films, and now I can identify what they are, and what makes them that kind of film — and so now I want to make a film like that of my own. And so I feel as though, after the book came out — in the first, like, two years after the book came out, actually — there were tons of movies, because I was writing them all down for Volume 2 of my book.

And so yeah, so I think the book definitely contributed to there being more movies like that. But, the book is going to be reissued for its 10th anniversary, that’s going to be in 2022. So in two years, so I’ve just started working on that. And right now, I’m just taking a log of all the movies I can think of that either I missed the first time around, or that have come out since the book was made. So the bulk of the book, like the memoir type story, that won’t be changed at all. But the appendix at the end that has all the capsules, that will be expanded, there’ll be like 100 new movies in there. 

Kelly McNeely: Something that I’ve also been thinking about a little bit, is I feel like there’s kind of two main archetypes in horror for female characters: the final girl, and the psychotic woman, which kind of feels like a Madonna/whore complex, horror’s interpretation of that.

Kier-la Janisse: Nice

Kelly McNeely: And I was just curious what your thoughts might be on that, if it’s something that I’m just imposing?

Kier-la Janisse: It’s interesting, because I do think a lot of the characters I can think of would fall into one of those two things. I mean, at least in terms of central characters. Obviously there’s always the kooky friend. The kooky friend is like — to me — the best character [laughs], because they get to be really weird, but they’re not like the focus of the film. So you don’t actually have to focus on how they are as being neurotic. You get to just enjoy eccentricity. So like a character like Greta Gerwig in House of the Devil. I feel like the actress Kathleen Wilhoite always would play the kooky friend or the kooky sister. But I think that character is not just in horror. I think that character is just in all movies. All movies have the kooky friend. 

And then obviously in slasher films, I mean, you have the final girl and then all the other girls — at least in older slasher films, I feel like it’s kind of changed a bit. Where in older slasher films, all the other female characters were definitely like, presented as being really clueless and shallow. And I feel like that turned around like in the 90s. I feel like there started to be a lot more sympathy for those characters. Well, no, who are these women? These are not just victims that are there to be victims, they are characters too, you know? And I think that something like Buffy the Vampire Slayer — I mean, I haven’t watched that much of that show — but was something that sort of took a lot of the women who would be victims in the slasher films that would tend to be more girlish than the final girl. I feel as though Buffy kind of took those girls and was like, no, we’re gonna let them fight too. They’ve got the hair and the makeup and the clothes, and they’re all popular and fashionable and stuff. But they’re also going to fight back and be aware of their surroundings and stuff. So I feel like in the 90s, things started to shift for those characters a bit. 

It’s hard to say because a lot of the characters even if it’s like, oh, the mother or whatever, the mother is still gonna fit one of those characters, whether it’s a final girl or like a crazy, crazy Mom, you know [laughs]? So I don’t know, I think that’s fairly accurate. In terms of the main characters, anyway.  

I remember being on a panel once. And it was like a panel where they were asking us about strong women in horror, and the panel was really divided, because half the women on the panel were talking about, like, Ripley from Alien, and talking about women who are actually physically strong and stuff. And then me and this other woman on the panel brought up Anna from Possession. And the other women were like, what? How is that a strong character, she was having a nervous breakdown. And we were just like… she’s so powerful! How can you deny that? So it was really interesting, the separation between what different women thought of as strong. Like, what does strong mean, you know? And strong in terms of being brave, being able to confront dark shit about yourself. That’s strong, too, you know? But again, she fits the kind of House of Psychotic Women characters.

Kelly McNeely: Now for my last question, circling back to anthologies again, I love that you asked this question of everyone that was interviewed for the film. What is your favorite anthology segment, and your favorite anthology film? And do you have a desert island anthology, as far as the ones that you would like to pick for your top segments if you were to make your own anthology film? 

Kier-la Janisse: So favorite film. I was having trouble with this. I got to talk a little bit about one of my favorite segments, but I didn’t get to really talk favorite film just because other people picked the same film, and they were more articulate than me or whatever, so we used them. But it’s really a toss up between Black Sabbath, the Mario Bava movie, and The Monster Club. The Monster Club is clearly a much sillier movie than Black Sabbath, but it’s one that I just adore everything about. And the segment that I talked about in the anthology is the Shadmock segment from the film.

It was about a monster that’s basically this lonely guy. He just really wants a friend and everybody thinks he’s so ugly, which is hilarious. You look at him, and he’s like, not ugly at all. But people find him like, oh, he’s so horrifying. And he hires this woman to be like an archivist or something, and she realizes that he’s very wealthy and very hard up for attention and friendship and decides to team up with her boyfriend to manipulate him and try to get his money.

And that particular story I love because it’s so sad. And again, I talked about it in the movie, but I had this book as a kid called Lamont the Lonely Monster. And it was very much that type of story about the monster that couldn’t get anyone to be his friend, because they only saw his surface, like this horrible outside, but he’s really this sweet, naive, friendly monster. And so I really related to that particular story in The Monster Club, but also the whole framing story of that movie is really a love letter to horror fandom. It’s the whole idea of the monster club. It’s where all the monsters go, and where they all hang out and where they all get to be weird together and stuff. And they’re all horror fans, they’re all into horror movies. 

John Carradine plays a horror writer, and Vincent Price recognizes him on the street, and he’s like, oh, I’m such a big fan, you’ve got to come to the monster club. And all the monsters are excited to meet him because he’s a famous horror writer. So it’s just so built into that movie, the whole idea of like, being a horror fan, and what it’s like to meet other horror fans for the first time.

Because around that time, when The Monster Club was made was when horror conventions were first starting to get very big, and when horror fans were really meeting each other a lot for the first time, and having pen pals that were other horror fans. Because so many horror fans used to grow up thinking they were the only one. And so The Monster Club as a movie, I feel like really taps into that. All the feelings around that. So I love that movie. But I mean, as a sort of masterpiece of the anthology, I would say Black Sabbath, the Mario Bava one.

And then as far as a desert island film, it would probably be A Drop of Water from Black Sabbath, The Shadmock from The Monster Club, and Lady of the Snow from Kwaidan.  One of the other ones that I don’t know if I got to talk about in the film — I can’t remember if it got cut out or not — is the French film Fear(s) of the Dark. Which is a black and white animated anthology which I just adore. And that film, I can’t really pick a favorite out of. It’s structured in a really interesting way, where they kind of have some stories that exist as standalone things, but then there’s other ones that they just kind of keep going back to. It’s not even one framing story, it’s kind of like there’s a couple of framing stories that they keep going back to throughout the film. It’s just a really, really interesting film, and super tight aesthetically, it’s very high contrast black and white. Beautiful stuff.

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Tales of the Uncanny will run as part of the Winnipeg Film Group’s Cinematheque from Nov. 24 – Dec. 15 with tickets available across Canada.  To read about one of my favorite new horror anthologies, you can read our review of Shudder’s recently acquired anthology film, The Mortuary Collection. 

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