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"Girls and Corpses is kind of like Maxim Magazine meets Dawn of the Dead," you're told in metatag shorthand if you Google the phrase -- and nothing could better summarize this freaky, funky, tongue-in-cheek fusion of lad mags with softcore zombie porn. A slick, hilarious evisceration of innocuous newsstand fare, G&C lures gore freaks and sex nerds alike to caress its glossy pages with such promised features as "Better Tombs and Gardens," "Celebrity Queefing," "Thanksgiving Enemas," "Porn Star Recipes," "Pilgrims Gone Wild" and "Ren & Stimpy: The Lost Sex Tape!" It's two parts male bonding, six parts gratuitous B-movie weirdness, twelve or so parts satire and about eighteen parts inspired gonzo freakout. With girls. And -- need I mention it? -- corpses. Eros Zine sent Funeral Party editor and film writer Shade Rupe to chat with G&C creator Robert Steven Rhine, the cracked genius behind Girls and Corpses. --Thomas Roche
Robert Steven Rhine: Yes, we will be having more 'female' corpses, and we have done girl-corpse-on-girl-corpse and zombie-on-corpse pictorials in our online version of the magazine. But having hunky guys with female corpses kind of spoils the beauty of having a gorgeous woman with a decaying corpse. Girls and Corpses Magazine empowers women -- whereas in horror movies they are always the victims getting hacked in two. So, why mess with perfection? (FYI, male corpses don't have genitalia. The spongy tissue that forms the penis just rots away -- fun fact). Shade Rupe: Have any of the girls become spoiled? Can they enjoy relationships with live men too? Robert Steven Rhine: True -- our girls are spoiled by corpses. But so long as their boyfriends smell ripe, just lay there in bed and keep their mouths shut they can still enjoy 'living' relationships. It's the dream for many women to find a man like that. Shade Rupe: Have you considered graveside photo shoots? Robert Steven Rhine: Of corpse. We shot our first cover with Sheri Moon Zombie in the graveyard and we have an article on 'disinterment' in our next issue -- with open coffin shots. The obvious thing would to be to put a hot girl in a coffin with a cadaver, but it's so on the nose I have been holding that one off for a future issue -- when we run out of ideas. But that's not going to happen for a long time. Shade Rupe: Is Girls and Corpses your first foray into the subject matter? Robert Steven Rhine: I had never written specifically about 'necrophilia' before but I had always written on the dark twisted side. My first published book, "My Brain Escapes Me" (Sun Dog Press), was motivated by a life-threatening head injury I sustained as a boy. You can find out more about the genesis of my madness at: http://www.robertrhine.com. I also wrote a sick series of comic book anthologies, "Selected Readings From Satan's Powder Room," "Chicken Soup For Satan," and "Satan Gone Wild." These successful comic books led to my 280-page, color graphic novel, "Satan's 3-Ring Circus of Hell" (featuring 43 of the top horror artists in the world -- illustrating my twisted tales). The book still sells very well and can be purchased at my website.
I also created a crazy animated series titled, "Sickcom" about a serial killer whose wife is a dominatrix, son is a meth dealer, daughter has a porn webcam site, neighbor is a pedophile priest. They also have a crack baby and a rabid show poodle. You can watch the series at Girls and Corpses TV at girlsandcorpsestv.com. Also, at Girls and Corpses TV, you can watch a pilot for a series I wrote and produced, and even play the lead in titled, "Vinnie and Angela's Beauty Salon & Funeral Parlor." So, I guess, to answer your question, I've always had a somewhat morbid sense of humor but Girls and Corpses is my first necro-feel. Shade Rupe: What is the genesis of the publication and when did you realize it could be popular enough to support a print magazine? Robert Steven Rhine: For five years I had an exhibitor's booth at Comic-Con where I would sell my comic books and such. A friend of mine, Kevin Klemm, has an amazing collection of corpses he had acquired over the years from body brokers and warlords. So each year I would borrow a corpse or two to take to Comic-Con to display at my booth. And each year girls would come up and want to have their pictures taken with these corpses. Not just any girls… beautiful model types. This got me to thinking, "What's up with girls and corpses?" Though, I'm probably the only person in the world that would think to make this into an actual magazine -- I just felt it had to be done -- for humanity. But it was the public's thirst for this material that drove it to publication. I did fifteen web issues before going to print and it was phenomenally successful. We are but a conduit for the public's insatiable hunger for girls and corpses. When I launched the website in 2005, I had so many hits in the first three days that I kept having to shut down and relaunch with a larger server. But I always knew this could be a print magazine. I could feel it in my bones Shade Rupe: What is your circulation? Robert Steven Rhine: Corpses don't have any circulation. However, we will know more as soon as Ingram places their order, that's when we will hit the newsstands and Barnes & Noble, etc. But on the web we have millions of visitors a month. And Diamond Distributors has been selling us too.
Shade Rupe: Do you have interest in corresponding and connecting with actual necrophiliacs or is it all in good fun? Robert Steven Rhine: Necrophiliacs tend to stay, well, underground. But if there are any of them out there who would like to be interviewed, our rotting ears are wide open. I suppose somewhere there is a necrophiliacs message board and they trade photos, etc. But let's not forget that this fetish is illegal, as is harboring dead bodies. So, not too many want to step forward and identify themselves. But they know who they are… Shade. I have gotten a few interesting letters though. One was from a girl who's father owned a funeral home and when he died she decided to have sex with his body in their funeral home, after injecting his penis with a solution to make it stiff. It was all very clinically detailed so I tended to believe it, but I decided to not print it because it could have been a fake. Also, we are not really a magazine about necrophilia but rather a spoof. Say, Maxim magazine meets "Dawn of The Dead." Shade Rupe: Do you know your main audience? Fetishists, horror movie fans, your average chick-digging joe looking for something fun and different? Robert Steven Rhine: I think we get a little bit of all those you mentioned and more. Doctors, goths, teachers, death metal freaks, lawyers, Suicide type girls, bikers, horror fans, comedy fans. We are filling a void left by magazines like National Lampoon. I just shipped off a box to a platoon in Iraq who requested mags for their unit. I'm sending these for free in support of our troops. There is a fascination for this material because there has never been a comedy magazine about death. There are magazines about skateboarding and sailing and tattoos, but not all of us are interested in those things. However, death, like birth, is the one thing we will all experience… at least once. We are just opening the discussion into death in a spoonful of honey. I am however, the resident necrophilia expert on Playboy Radio, Maxim Radio and KSEX. Shade Rupe: Have you considered articles on Francois Bertrand, Ed Gein, Henri Blot, or Karen Greenlee, or is that too 'real'? Robert Steven Rhine: No… but perhaps a dinner party? Actually, it's not that's it's 'too real' that will prevent us from covering actual serial killers. I love the reality of death and those that work in the funeral field. But I don't want to aggrandize real murderers any more than they already have been. These were horrible true-life monsters who stole lives not just from their victims but from the families and friends of the victims. Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer may be gone but the families they affected are still living with the pain of their losses -- mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters who were killed at the hands of a psychopath. We don't want to bring more suffering to them. So, I avoid covering the real deal. For me it would be ill-advised and irresponsible.
Robert Steven Rhine: To many people I am the 'scariest' person they meet. Not much scares me anymore. I yawn at horror films. I find what you would call "scary," just interesting. I truly enjoy talking to embalmers and mortuary owners and cremators. Many seem to have a sense of humor and are more in-touch with life and death than the general public. The only truly scary letters I get are like the one I received from Christ The Light Cathedral saying, "You are completely sick. I hope you and your corpses rot in hell. Signed a parent with a daughter who will never read crap like yours." I featured that letter as our first Letters-To-The-Deaditor in issue #1. My full response can be read in that issue but I thought it was a bit redundant hoping our corpses would rot. So, to me, the scariest things are the assorted nuts of organized religion, picking the pockets of parishioners while diddling their children in the confession box. I can't believe there are still some people stupid enough to believe they will be "saved" by religious zealots who cannot save themselves from their own peckers. If Jesus existed, the last thing he would have built would have been the Vatican -- with the Pirates of the Caribbean pile of gold and gems lining the halls -- riches plucked from the gnarled fingers of poor folk. Don't get me started on organized religion. More people have been killed in the name of religion than all the wars put together and many of those wars were started over religion. So, I guess I'd have to say, "Religion kills." I think I'm going to put that on a bumper sticker. Shade Rupe: Just what is it that makes girls and corpses go so well together? Robert Steven Rhine: We glue them. Actually, they are the extreme polar opposites of life and death. What is more alive than an eighteen-year-old, fresh-faced model in a bikini? Now put that next to a rotting corpse and you have a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup -- two great tastes in one. It's Beauty and the Beast. It's in classic literature and in comedy: Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, the Honeymooners' Ralph Kramden and Norton. Fat/thin. Smart/dumb. Dead/living. Opposites play well in comedy. Shade Rupe: You also have attracted Hollywood horror film personalities to your publication with the assistance of hot chick writer Staci Layne Wilson. How did you two meet?
Shade Rupe: The centerfold, comics, etc. are all great fun. And those ads! How much of this publication is the sole work of the sick mind of Robert Steven Rhine? Robert Steven Rhine: Thanks for the compliment -- I think. As of now, I am the only full-time employee of Girls and Corpses Magazine and I write 90% of the gags in the magazine. I always dreamed of writing for Mad Magazine but I had to settle for contributing to Cracked Magazine. I create all the comedy ads in G&C and have my talented artist friend D.W. Frydendall lay them out and illustrate. I do sometimes hire freelance writers for articles and interviews. Any writers with ideas, or those who work in strange creepy jobs, can email me at info@girlsandcorpses.com. But for now I write the majority of the magazine until the wee hours of the morning seven days a week. This a dream of mine (nightmare?) that is decades in the making and I'm having an absolute blast. If you corpses are interested in learning more about us, run, don't crawl, to girlsandcorpses.com.
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