From contributor David Moye, Editor of The Naughty American:
Mag Pairs Hot Chicks With Cold Stiffs
by Jaye Beldo
The Naughty American
October 29, 2007
Los Angeles (TNA) – Sigmund Freud once said the world”™s two greatest taboos were sex and death. Leave it to award-winning horror writer Robert Steven Rhine to bring them together.
Rhine, author of such works as Satan”™s 3-Ring Circus of Hell and My Brain Escapes Me, has now made strange bedfellows of – what else – funerals and fornication.
His comedy/horror magazine Girls and Corpses features celebrity interviews, advertising spoofs, comic book art and, of course, photos of sumptuous babes posing suggestively with rotting cadavers.
“I realized that there are an awful lot of people [men and women] who like to look at hot girls, and a huge audience for horror,” Rhine said. “So I thought, “˜Why not put the two great tastes together in one?”™ Sort of like a rotting Reese”™s Peanut Butter Cup. It”™s been a tremendous success.”
The publication, which Rhine describes as Maxim meets Dawn of the Dead, is far from the fringe. The print version is available throughout the United States and overseas through distributors Ingram and Diamond Comics. The Web site (www.girlsandcorpses.com) recently topped 100 million hits.
Yes, G&C readers rejoice – you are no longer relegated to the seedy back alleys behind topless bars. Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt, a staunch defender of First Amendment rights, is pictured proudly hoisting a 2007 Girls and Corpses calendar on the five-year-old magazine”™s Web site. And comic actor/Internet talk show host Tom Green considers himself a big fan.
But exposing corpses, as well as beautiful women, to the limelight isn”™t without its perils. There have been widespread protests, including one inflammatory letter from Christ The Light Cathedral in Salt Lake City, Utah, that read: “You are completely sick. I hope you and your corpses rot in hell.”
And this is a magazine with no nudity whatsoever – none – that has people cursing it for eternity.
But perhaps it”™s the creepy columns.
There”™s “Funeral Etiquette,” which tells advice-seekers whether it”™s acceptable to fart at a wake, or if heckling the reader of a eulogy is equal to jeering a comedian on stage. Meanwhile, “Sex Tips” by Dr. Necco Feelya guides hapless corpses toward a healthier post-mortem sex life. When one deceased reader inquired about an odd buzzing noise, the good doctor replied it was most likely flies laying eggs in his ear canals, not high blood pressure. He suggested treating the trouble spot with a Q-Tip doused in gasoline.
Not macabre enough? The Web site offers some truly bizarre products. Try “Prison Soap,” which features a lifelike rectum carved into a real, 100-percent glycerine bar of soap. Rhine claims a San Diego County assistant district attorney once purchased one.
But all anyone ever wants to talk about, it seems, are the corpses.
“We”™re not grave robbers,” Rhine stated emphatically, though he readily points out the lifelike (or deathlike, if you prefer) appearance of the corpses that adorn each issue is no accident.
He claims he only uses real cadavers that he gets from South America, Eastern China and Guam, he explains, where laws about shipping bodies across continents are more “lenient.” The cadavers are stored in dry ice and later dusted with a preserving powder called Cureodite, which stops the decaying process.
Next, self-described “corpse stylist” Kevin Klemm replaces the cadaver”™s fat and water with synthetics through a technique called “plastination.” It”™s the same process used by artist Gunther Von Hagens in his well-known Body Worlds exhibit.
“The plastination process sets the bodies in the positions we need them in for the photo shoot and also allows us to work with the corpses without the usual problems of decay, stench and maggots – which could be a real turnoff for our female models and would create a biohazard under the hot lights of a photo shoot,” Rhine explained.
In reality, the cadavers are models made by a top Hollywood special effects house, but Rhine doesn’t like to mention that, feeling it spoils “the joke.”
Fortunately, these stench-free corpses aren”™t made to pose with run-of-the mill, worn-out models or washed-up adult film stars. Instead, they get bona-fide hot, living babes like Sheri Moon from Rob Zombie”™s House of a Thousand Corpses, Sid Haig, who starred in The Devil”™s Rejects, and Clown Porn star Hollie Stevens, among others of equally impressive caliber and beauty.
Stevens, for one, says she loves posing with her rotted co-models. But despite having some strong working relationships, she”™s not dying to date any of them.
“I enjoy working with them,” Stevens said. “Corpses usually have a great sense of humor and always know how to make me laugh, but they’re just not my type.”
While the publication may appear to some as little more than post-mortem perversion, Rhine has a more enlivened, dare we say, healthier, outlook.
“The ultimate goal of Girls and Corpses magazine is to open your eyes to the second most important event in your life following birth – your death,” he said. “We all have an expiration date stamped on our soul which we have little control over, but we can control how we live our lives.
“Humor is the perfect way to allow us to look at this dark and inevitable curtain call of life.”