While neurotic personalities have been pervasive throughout film history, few capture the imagination as wildly as the offshoots of female psychosis. A favoured staple feature in genre films, the neurotic woman stars as a vicious harpy in both horror and exploitation and incarnates the paranoid, hysterical, obsessive and downright dangerous forces found in the thriller and the psychological drama. Our selection covers a vast array of films made from the 1940s onwards, the era where women fought for equal rights and freed themselves from the stifling bodice of a male centered society. The weaker sex? We beg to differ.