HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN Sidebar at SF Indie!
As part of its 2013 programming, SF Indie will be hosting a House of Psychotic Women sidebar, with rare prints of two films hosted by author Kier-la Janisse, who will be introducing each show and signing copies of her book afterwards. House of Psychotic Women is an autobiographical exploration of female neurosis in horror and exploitation films. Anecdotes and memories interweave with film history, criticism, trivia and confrontational imagery to create a reflective personal history and examination of female madness, both onscreen and off.
Screenings will include:
BORN INNOCENT
Donald Wrye, USA 1974 | 16mm film – rare uncut, original broadcast version
courtesy of The Cosmic Hex Archive
Linda Blair plays Christine Parker, a 14-year old soft-spoken runaway who is deposited in a state school for juvenile delinquents when her parents sign her over as a ward of the court. A good girl in a bad situation, Chris undergoes a series of humiliations including aggressive body-searches and de-lousing, but when one of the staff exhibits signs of favoritism toward her, she is punished by the other girls who rape her in the showers with a toilet plunger. There are many women-in-prison films that depict the transformation of a good girl into a hardened criminal (one of the earliest being the great Academy Award nominee Caged, 1949), but BORN INNOCENT remains one of the best.
TOYS ARE NOT FOR CHILDREN
Stanley Brassloff, USA 1972 | 35mm print
courtesy of the American Genre Film Archive
One of the most revered exploitation films of the 70s among true trash connoisseurs, Stanley Brassloff’s Toys are not for Children is a thoroughly demented Electra-complex tale with plenty of meat and no morals to speak of. Jamie is a teenage girl who idolizes her absentee father (who her grouchy mother frequently refers to as lecherous scum) and stays emotionally stunted in childhood as a result. Her affection for toys is considered “unnatural”, but it isn’t half as unnatural as her creepy longing for her own father. When she meets an aging prostitute named Pearl, who she suspects is an acquaintance of her estranged father, Jamie finds herself attracted to this seedy lifestyle and becomes a prostitute herself, specializing in older johns who like it when girls call them “daddy” while she awaits the long-anticipated reunion. Truly one of the most unnerving, squirm-inducing experiences you will ever have in a theatre.
