For those who frequent the festival circuit, spend dark days in NYC’s numerous rep houses, or find their comfort in extreme, thanatological literature, the name Shade Rupe levitra without registration is all too familiar. A boisterous, effervescent film fanatic in the truest sense of the word – his eternal optimism often belying the dark subject matter with which he is routinely obsessed – Rupe’s meticulous knowledge of the margins of pop culture has led him into acquaintances with some of its most unique proponents.

First recognized on the scene with the two volumes of his self-published Funeral Party journals in the late 90s – which featured articles, interviews, fiction and artwork with/from the likes of Peter Sotos, HR Giger, Jack Ketchum, the Kuchar Brothers, Jack Stevenson and more – Rupe went on to contribute to the mammoth Scarecrow Video Guide and a host of international genre publications as well as being an interview subject for Bravo’s series of “Scariest Movie Moments” TV docos. His latest book Dark Stars Rising, which comes to us from David Kerekes’ Headpress Publications is the fruit of nearly 25 years of collected interviews.

Shade Rupe with Divine, 1986

His salacious choice of interview subjects is enough to provide the adventurous pop culture connoisseur with integral insight into some of the most distinct and uncompromising artistic voices of the last several decades, and enough to provide any genre day-tripper with a levitra prescription mind-altering smorgasbord of weirdness.

Subjects range from controversial authors Dennis Cooper and Peter Sotos (whose book Special Rupe published in 1998) to showmen Zamora the Torture King, Teller and Brother Theodore, scatological performance artists Herman Nitsch (most famous from his work with the Vienna Actionists) and Johanna Went, comic book artists Dame Darcy and Arnold Drake, film icons Divine, Udo Kier, Crispin Glover and Tura Satana and visionary filmmakers Richard Stanley, Jim Van Bebber, Buddy Giovinazzo, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Richard Kern, among others. With few exceptions, most of the interviews are lengthy and at times deeply imploring and viagra to order philosophical.

There were a number of interviews here I couldn’t wait to dive into, but most fascinating for me was the interview with Dennis Cooper, who I was only familiar with from Todd Verow’s adaptation of Cooper’s book Frisk, which – as Cooper admits here – was a muddled and disappointing interpretation of his Sadeian adolescent fantasy novel. The interview is illustrated with disturbing images of young boys that straddle an uncomfortable line between teen idol pinups and missing children notices, adorned with hand-written text like:

Fuck us totally over, strangle us and bury us together in a deep dark hole. That’s all we ask. Otherwise, we’re yours. Really. Where’s your sense of danger. Prove you’re a man. We’ll put our hands there. Don’t be shy. Take them.

Rupe invites his subjects to talk through their darkest dreams with enthusiasm rather than judgment. But what runs through these interviews most impressively is a lack of fear or trepidation, the kind that might trip up other interviewers when in conversation with notoriously intimidating subjects. There’s something about Rupe’s personality that clearly disarms people. Somehow he can get away with remarking to Genesis Breyer P-Orridge that she has “just as many outfits as Cher”.

The book also features 30 pages of film and book reviews, and while the reviews themselves are insightful, this section seems almost tacked-on considering the book’s broader scope. Primarily black and white with a few color plates at the book’s front and back, the tome is nonetheless lavishly illustrated and designed, with an eye-catching texture that matches its diverse subjects. Always fascinating and often disturbing, this is an essential collection that is bound to become a fixture on counterculture bookshelves for decades to come.

– Kier-La Janisse

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To buy Dark Stars Rising, go directly to Headpress HERE.

Rupe’s book is nicely complemented by Gene Gregorits’ Midnight Mavericks: Report from the Underground, Gregorits being another legendary, if anarchic, fixture on the underground film scene who also has exceptional taste in interview subjects. Buy Gregorits’ book from publisher FAB Press HERE.

Also Adam Parfrey’s Apocalypse Culture (1987) should go without saying, but just in case, pick it up directly from Feral House Publishing HERE.

About the author:

Kier-La Janisse

Kier-La Janisse is a film writer, publisher, producer, acquisitions executive for Severin Films and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University. She is the author of Cockfight: A Fable of Failure (2024), House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (2012/2022) and 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) and Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s (2015). She wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021), and produced the acclaimed blu-ray box sets All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror (2021) and The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle (2023).