A decade ago in 2012, the world of film scholarship took a bold leap with the release of House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films, a groundbreaking book by film programmer, scholar, and all-around pop culture magician Kier-La Janisse. Mixing turbulent personal memoir and analysis of related depictions of female psychological disturbance on film, it cast a new light on how to interpret the many films around the world dealing with women perceived as mad. Timed to coincide with the release of an updated and revised version of the book in 2022 is the House of Psychotic Women Rarities Collection, a four-disc Blu-ray set (also available in a deluxe "House Key Bundle") curated by Janisse on the heels of her outstanding folk horror collection from the beginning of the same year, All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror. Here you get a far-reaching and fascinating sampler consisting of two superb Italian productions (both shot by Oscar winner Vittorio Storaro, who went on to earn Oscars for Apocalypse Now, Reds, and The Last Emperor, here at the peak of his powers) and more challenging, unexpected offerings from Poland and Great Britain. Anyone expecting horror films will be surprised as none of them comfortably fit entirely within that genre, but they're all unique and unsettling works for the cinematically adventurous.

First up is the most widely released title in the set, 1974's Identikit, which played American theaters and hit VHS as The Driver's Seat (the title of the source novel by Muriel Spark, which this follows quite faithfully). Star Elizabeth Taylor had been embarking on a truly astonishing and audience-dividing cinematic voyage in the wake of her Oscar-winning turn in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, soaring to maniacal heights in films like Reflections in a Golden Eye, Boom!, Secret Ceremony, X, Y and Zee, Night Watch, and Ash Wednesday. All of those films got lukewarm to scathing notices at the time but have gone on to substantial cult followings, and the apex of her string of unstable roles came with Identikit which finds her in full-on neurotic mode within the opening moments. Here she plays Lise, an easily riled London resident first seen picking out a vibrant dress for her planned holiday to Italy. Along the way she reacts unpredictably as she encounters a number of people including grinning macrobiotic diet fiend Bill (Bannen), a fellow British tourist (Washbourne) for a shopping excursion, and a pushy Roman guy named Carlo (Caligula's Mannari). Along the way we repeatedly flash forward to interrogations of each person she encountered by the police (including giallo vet Maurizio Bonuglia with a fake mustache) who are acting on notices from Interpol about Lise's activities. On top of that, Lise is repeatedly trying to find a certain kind of man for a destiny that only becomes completely clear in the closing minutes.

This film's director, Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, is rarely discussed among significant Italian filmmakers but he displayed a remarkable visual style threading through films like this one, his underseen masterpiece 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, the swinging Metti, una sera a cena, and the Lucio Fulci-penned Collector's Item. His style works very well here giving it a beautiful but off-kilter tone all the way through, accentuated by Storaro's gorgeous cinematography and an elegant, piano-driven score by Franco Mannino. It's definitely not a film for everyone given the deliberately abrasive nature of Taylor's character, but if you succumb to its jagged elegance, there's a lot to enjoy here including a woozy late-film cameo from none other than Andy Warhol. Any film this unorthodox was a target for ridicule at the time, and of course this one ended up getting a particularly florid write-up in Bad Movies We Love that actually makes this sound like the greatest film ever made.

Avco Embassy picked this one up from the Italian producers for U.S. distribution with its Embassy Home Entertainment imprint handling home video duties on VHS, but for some reason the film seemed to wander off into some kind of quasi-PD netherworld with a few sketchy bootleg labels issuing it on DVD (poorly ripped from that same tape which was already badly cropped to boot). The best-looking option for a while was the Italian DVD, which was presented in the original aspect ratio from a nice transfer; alas, it was only in Italian with no English-friendly options. For the record, the film was entirely shot in English with Taylor, Bannen, and so on providing their own vocal performances, while some of the Italian actors like Bonuglia had to be dubbed. The Severin release is a real life saver, presenting the first visually worthy, English-friendly release of this film in any format; it's also the original European Identikit version, which runs slightly longer (with a bit more dialogue during the Interpol interrogations near the end).

The source for this new 4K restoration by the Cinematheque of Bogona and Severin isn't specified, but apart from some minor on-and-off damage visible during the first reel, it looks spectacular with those intense colors looking as impressive as possible. The DTS-HD MA 2.0 audio options include the English track and the Italian dub with optional English SDH subtitles. Janisse provides a welcome video intro (5m27s) about Spark (who also wrote The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) and her own identification with the main character and overall story, while a new audio commentary by TCM Underground's Millie De Chirico goes further into the novel, Taylor's separation from Richard Burton just before filming, the rewards of multiple viewings, the symbolism of the frequent mirror usage, the prevalence of real-life terrorism that filters into the film, and more. Her comments are very sparse after the 40-minute mark, so be ready to fast forward quite a bit. In "A Lack of Absence" (22m3s), Chandra Mayor takes a deep dive into the themes of Spark's often challenging work, including some footage of the writer herself talking about her process. Also included are the main and end titles from The Driver's Seat version (4m7s) complete with MPAA card, plus a standard def trailer and the closest approximation of it as possible reconstructed from the HD source.

Title number two in our excursion is easily the most obscure: the semi-comedic, oddball 1986 Polish film, I Like Bats. Though it qualifies as a vampire film, it mainly uses the monster tropes to craft a character study about a young woman who feels like an outsider trying to "fix" herself and conform to the life she's been told is normal. Working by day in her aunt's antique shop, Izabela (Walter) shows a strong fondness for bats and occasionally goes out at night to feed on the less reputable male citizens in the area. Deciding she'd rather live life as a normal human, she decides to seek therapy and ends up in a sanitarium under the care of Professor Jung (Barbasiewicz), for whom she starts to form a romantic attachment.

Essentially unknown in English-speaking circles, I Like Bats has an interesting pedigree including director and co-writer Grzegorz Warchol (far better known as an actor including Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors: White), composer Zbigniew Preisner (who provided Kieslowski's most important and influential scores including The Double Life of Veronique), and feminist co-writer Krystyna Kofta. It's a peculiar work that tries to mix '80s pop trappings with classic local monster folklore, along with a heavy streak of wry comedy as Izabela juggles her working life with her nocturnal activities slapping on a black wig and going on the prowl. The fact that everyone around here is equally strange (especially at a nightclub where one patron likes to parade around topless) adds to the unpredictable tone, which carries with less potency during the sanitarium sequences where the patients (including poet-songwriter Jonasz Kofta) make her transition to humanity quite a challenge. Ultimately it's more interesting as a study of how women are supposed to change and be "tamed" by the culture at large than as a vampire story, an element that gets largely forgotten at times and culminates in a shrug of a twist ending that was already shopworn when Dracula and Son did it a decade earlier. Just approach it as a dark comedy slice of Polish film fantastique though and you'll find plenty to chew on here, including that Preisner score whose whimsical whistling gets you into the right spirit.

To bring I Like Bats to Blu-ray, the Severin release features a 2K scan cited as being from the only 35mm print known to exist. That means it obviously features the limitations of that source but looks quite striking all the same with rich blacks and some insane color schemes at times including bursts of stylized red lighting. If this is the best it can possibly look, not too shabby! The DTS-HD MA Polish 2.0 track also sounds fine and features optional English subtitles. Janisse provides an insightful intro (10m18s) about the film's use of Slavic monster folklore including the concept of a vampire having two hearts, representing the duality of the character here and the possibility of being born into the undead rather than being turned. A new audio commentary Kamila Wielebska, actor and co-editor of the book A Story Of Sin: Surrealism In Polish Cinema, is really something else and probably the closest thing to commentary performance art you'll come across. She clearly has a ball dramatically elucidating about vampire conventions, the elements of everyday Polish life at the time, the curious aspects of the setting, the depictions of men versus women, and the treatment of insanity. An HD TV spot is also included.

The third and fourth discs are devoted to the Italian sorta-giallo gem Footprints, which has been issued as a standalone several times and has a complex history you can read about here. The set wraps up on disc five with the U.S. premiere of the one most widely available before on Blu-ray, The Other Side of the Underneath, which first appeared in the U.K. in 2009 as part of three BFI Blu-ray releases dedicated to the works of Jane Arden and frequent collaborator Jack Bond (It Couldn't Happen Here) along with Anti-Clock and Separation. The same excellent restoration is carried over here and it still holds up very well, preserving the gritty and sometimes gorgeous look of this nonlinear descent into insanity. Barely released in 1972, it's more or less based on Arden's stage production from the prior year, A New Communion for Freaks, Prophets and Witches, featuring several of the same members from the Holocaust Theatre Company. Shot in Wales under the influence of strong controlled substances, it's an unflinching shriek of a film depicting the progress of a young woman (Fraey) whose attempted suicide by drowning lands her in a therapy group for women held in a gigantic cave by a doctor (Arden herself, uncredited). From there it's an escalating string of intense vignettes depicting the extreme lengths of the human psyche under duress, albeit with a spark of optimism buried in all the pain.

The arduous circumstances behind the making of the film shouldn't come as much of a surprise given the delirious intensity of what ended up on the screen, and while it was promoted at the time as a breakthrough in British cinema, the film still hasn't really gotten its due (especially as a rare British female-directed work from the period). The Severin release offers a very solid roster of extras to give context to this experience, including porting over the interviews with actors Sheila Allen (28m35s) and Natasha Morgan (9m48s) as well as a reel of extended sequences (33m59s). In keeping with the BFI Blu-ray, it also offers an alternate extended workprint version of the film, clocking it at 129 minutes and likely more than many constitutions will be able to bear. A video introduction by Janisse (9m3s) lays out quite a bit of background about Arden and her affiliation with the anti-psychiatry movement, her research into the participants, how she discovered it in the first place, and the circumstances of Arden's work following her suicide in 1982. British surrealist author and artist Penny Slinger, who also appears in the film, gets the most extensive extra here with a 134m19s appearance at the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies in conversation with Jacqueline Castel. It's chock full of amazing material including coverage of her multimedia artwork, her experiences with other counterculture figures, the tragic aspects of making this film, her written work, the ceremonial aspects of being an artist, and the foundations of surrealist feminism. Also included is a trailer for the 2017 documentary, Penny Slinger: Out of the Shadows.

Reviewed on October 11, 2022.