By Peter Berton
STUDIO CITY, Calif. – We live in a world of sexual marketing niches, and few niches could be more niche-like than the pairing of buxom babes and rotting corpses, as found in Girls and Corpses magazine.
Girls and Corpses is a mashup of horror and comedy showcasing girl-corpse content. It’s the brainchild Robert “Corpsy” Rhine, who calls himself the publisher and deaditor-in-chief.
YNOT: What is the concept behind Girls and Corpses magazine?
Robert “Corpsy” Rhine: It’s rather simple: girls and corpses. The magazine has “real” corpses photographed with actual beautiful women, dark comedy and simulated acts of affection between the living and the dead.
Are we talking real corpses here?
Yes, we do have real corpses in every issue of the magazine. It’s sort of like Beauty and the Beast on meth, or a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup — two great flavors in one.
And you’re a comedy magazine?
We’re MAD for the dead. People are scared to think about death, but Girls and Corpses familiarizes them with this crucial subject in a humorous way. We are the first comedy magazine about death … and most likely the last.
I think many are surprised that the magazine is such a high-quality publication. It’s 80 glossy pages of comedy and horror. The Huffington Post voted us “the #1 most ridiculous magazine of all time,” and MTV called us, “the weirdest magazine in the world.” What more could we ask for?
Who is your target audience?
Both the living and the dead. We have readers of all ages and backgrounds from all over the world.
We target people with imagination, intelligence and a sense of humor. If you don’t “get” our magazine, you are brain dead and better suited to portray a corpse on our cover.
We are also big in prisons, and even though we have been banned in all of them, the magazines somehow slip in along with black tar heroin.
How did the magazine get started?
Long story. I was killed, literally, when I was 10 by a massive skull fracture, and my brain partially came out of my cranium. My parents were told by doctors I was a goner. But after missing the fifth grade in the hospital and going blind in one eye for a spell, I survived — I suppose to fulfill my destiny to create Girls and Corpses.
Years later, I wrote my first book, My Brain Escapes Me, with an X-ray of my smiling skull on the cover. So, my brush with death drove my fascination with it.
I’m also a comedy writer, so the death subject and humor is a tricky one and we walk that tightrope in each issue.
Also, for some odd reason, girls are attracted to corpses. I’s a phenomenon I can’t really explain. Let’s just say we never have to go looking for models, and they are all beautiful.
What sort of content do you provide?
Besides being an excellent rat cage liner, we want our readers to say “WTF?” with every page turn.
We publish a lot of stories and interviews with people in the death biz: forensics, cremations, body retrieval, crime scene cleaners, autopsy techs, funeral home workers, even hit men. But the magazine is also about everything extreme in life.
Our next issue is our Freaky Sumer edition, which will have the most famous people in the history of sideshows interviewed and profiled. We also interview and have celebrities on our covers.
You just did a shoot with Tera Patrick, correct?
Tera was photographed for our Bay-Rots cover with David Hasselcorpse a few issues ago, but Tera and I also just co-starred in the horror film Angel of Darkness: The Legend of Lilith for TomCat Films and director Lisa Palenica.
Tera and I had several, er, love scenes (non-nude, of corpse). So, here I am filming simulated sex scenes with this iconic adult star. No pressure, right? Fortunately, Tera and I are great friends so we had a blast, even though it was kind of like molesting your sister. We play lowlife criminals with an appetite for murder.
I show my bare ass on screen, but I told the producer, Ted Chalmers, they would sell a hell of a lot more tickets if it was Tera Patrick’s ass. The film will be released this winter.
What are your future plans?
Living … and then dying, down the line.
What has running the magazine taught you about people and marketing?
People will buy anything. They are also looking for something different and eye-catching, and Girls and Corpses is definitely both.
The magazine will stop people in their tracks. Just the name alone baffles people. They figure it is the most messed-up fetish magazine of all time, when actually we are just a comedy magazine with no nudity.
Whenever I tell people I created this crazy magazine they look at the cover and then always look up at my face like to see if I actually exist — as if who the hell would devote their life to such a magazine? But it’s amazing how a magazine about death has been such a fun part of my life.
