Post Mortem Pinups is all about discovering beauty in death. Of course it helps that everyone who is represented in the visual death of its art are still sexy enough to insert the flesh trocar that is entering stages of a strange living rigor mortis in the pants of everyone looking at the images Doug has created.

Through the art that is Post Mortem Pinups Doug Sakmann, a man who has enthralled the world with comedic horror porn parodies such as XXXorcist, Re-Penetrator, and Evil Head, has given hope to the sexually repressed as they pass car accidents, accidently stumble upon suicides, and inspire light bulbs as to what to do with the body of their girlfriend after they snuff them from too much bitching.

Post Mortem Pinups is not so much a reflection or commentary on how society detaches and denies its psyche from impending natural death as it serves to remind us that death can be sexy as long as we find the bodies first and redress them in lingerie and make sure that they weren’t fat in the first place. Rolling dead bodies around in flour to find the wet spot isn’t any sexier than if they were alive, especially since in death that wet spot is probably just grave cheese anyway. That’s the necromantic equivalent to a yeast infection and who needs that right?

Post Mortem Pinups is about hot dead chicks, which is exactly how it should be! All dead girls should be sexy, fully dressed in pre or postmortem makeup, and posed in what is to some, very erotic positions. Those “real” world corpses dying in all kinds of gross and unattractive positions just need to take a few community college classes to get it right so they can collapse and rot appropriately. Shakespeare once said that life is all a stage so death should not be any different, get it right!

G&C: You were driving down the highway and saw a gruesome car accident complete with a dead chick tossed in bloody pieces. It was at that point you remembered when you got caught staring at your neighbors breasts and she yelled to “take a picture it will last longer.” What was the genesis for Post Mortem Pinups?

DS: The idea for Post Mortem Pinups started with bloody dead pinups, but as I did research into the history of post-mortem photography it certainly influenced the direction. Whereas originally I thought to do a series of photos leading up to death, it evolved to be shots of the aftermath, more of a crime scene type vibe. Early Post-Mortem photography from the 1800’s was done in a way to capture the last memory of the dead, usually where the body is cleaned and propped up to look as though alive. Sometimes the living family members would pose with the body to get one final family portrait. That was not exactly the direction I was looking to go, obviously I wanted to have the elements of sexiness and gore in there. I was raised on a steady diet of Troma movies and Faces of Death so I wanted to find that fine line between realism and a sort of campy/sexy sensibility. Around the same time I was developing the project, I came across the work of Japanese crime-scene photographer Tsurisaki Kiyotaka (who also directed Orozco the Embalmer and Junk Films). The majority of his work is photo and video coverage of violent crime and accident scenes in third world countries. Places that dead bodies are left in the street for the public to see. Real death is not the biggest concern for these people, making sure that they also don’t get killed is a bigger issue. It’s really a fascinating juxtaposition to how death is covered up in the US. In these places, seeing a severed head on the front page of the newspaper is a common occurrence. I got in contact with Kiyotaka and he sent me his movies for our Backseat Film Festival, and that certainly influenced the direction of Post Mortem Pinups, for sure.

G&C: Car wrecks, suicides, and murder, death occurs everywhere in your photography. Do you find yourself walking around the house in a bathrobe smoking a Hugh Hefner pipe pondering just where death should occur next? Where do you find inspiration for each individual shoot?

DS: You could say sometimes I feel like a Post-Mortem Playboy....especially when I’m in the thick of it with 2 or 3 shoots in a week. I always make sure to get my hands bloody. Inspiration for the death scenes comes from many places, sometimes the model may request a certain way to die, and we’ll collaborate to make it happen in a way that works with the project. Like with Gia Paloma, ‘Cannibalized and Refrigerated for Leftovers’. She just so happened to be able to fit into her refrigerator so we worked with that. Other times, we’ll have a cool location in mind and I will just look around for the most violent way to die in a particular setting. And certainly some of it comes from inspiration of hearing or reading about real life murder and death. For instance, the Draven Star shoot, ‘Cooked Alive in an Oven’ actually happened. A woman handcuffed herself inside an oven that was on and committed suicide by getting burned up. Some stuff is so crazy you just can’t make it up!

G&C: Everyone knows traditional beauty includes dismemberment, arterial splatter, and leaking brain putrefaction. What do you feel is the artistic attraction to blood, sex, and death?

DS: Outside of actual murder, basically I learned by watching and working with other FX artists, reading books and practicing and perfecting my methods. I’ve never had any formal training. I’ve been working on movies for almost 10 years, and every time I work on a movie set there is something new to be learned. I create all the special effects for Post Mortem Pinups and the majority of the special effects work in the movies I direct, outside of major body casting and a few larger effects where I call in my friends to help (Mad props to Tim Considine, Monster in My Closet, 1313FX, Wicked FX and Josh Potter!). I also get consistent work as a SPFX artist on feature films as well as live events. To keep my skills sharp, and to network with other zombie lovers, in 2007 I founded the NYC Zombie Crawl which sets up zombie events in NYC as well as other markets. Since then we’ve been hired by many different groups to create zombie effects including Sega, the Tribeca Film Festival, Sony Records, NBC, Bravo TV and many more. We even helped out with the theatrical release of Diary of the Dead in NYC! You can check that out at www.nyczombiecrawl.com, we host public free events at the end of May and October every year. Hundreds of zombies rise from the grave to drink with us!

G&C: Squirting zombie lust, sexorcisms, and infernal fellatio have great comedic value. Do you find the natures of Post Mortem Pinups a more serious balance and expression to the cinematic “horror porn” parodies you make?

Post-Mortem Pinups is definitely a different animal than my horror-porn work. While I don’t take anything too seriously I think the Post-Mortem Pinups are more serious in tone, that is why the girls are not posing as zombies or gored up and laughing and being sexy. They are just dead. They don’t move, they just decay. Whereas in my horror-porn work (the AVN Award winning “Re-Penetrator” and nominated “The XXXorcist”, as well as the upcoming “Evil Head”), it is definitely a lot more campy and tongue-in-cheek as well as other places.

G&C: Does rigor mortis in sak(mann) and the concept of a “dead fuck” have more appeal for you these days? Has all of this sex and death artistic expression affected your personal love life in any weird and wild ways?

DS: No, for those of you who think that my work is a reflection of my sex life in anyway you’d be disappointed...I’m not really into having a girl be dead or pretend to be dead while I do her from behind. I will tell you though that a bit of fake blood play is always a good time, just watch what you stick to, you may get bruises. Also, I’m into zombie sex but that is only because I spend a good percentage of my time dressed as a zombie for one reason or another, and so does my girlfriend.

G&C: One morning all of your naked girlfriends awaken to find you stiff in bed but not in a good way. Well except for that red head cause she rode you anyway but she has issues. How do you want to die and what do you want done with your body?

DS: Actually, I did think about this quite a bit when I was younger...I thought it would be cool to have my skull preserved and placed on a plaque or a pedestal, like a museum display. It would be even cooler to have it dyed so it glowed in the blacklight. I went to a lot of raves back then. Nowadays I have thoughts to donate my body to Gunther von Hagens for body plasticization...I would prefer it to be one where the skin is stripped so you are not really recognizable, I think it would be kinda creepy to be on display naked where everyone can recognize you after you’re dead.

G&C: Have you ever considered a career in actual crime scene photography or do you prefer your death more latex and corn syrupy?

DS: I would totally be down to do some actual crime scene photography, and with the economy in the state that it is, I may just take it up as a part time job! I bet it pays pretty good too! I actually know a few morticians and am working on setting up a few morgue visits to get some real life study going on, maybe even get my hands all up in there!

G&C: Are you a necrophilic voyeur with a blood fetish or will you ever come in front of the camera? (pun intended)

DS: Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t, and that’s for me to know and you to find out...when I go to trial in 2012 for all those videos they dug up in the Pen Argyl Cemetery.

G&C: Do you ever wander around the ICU and do some impromptu casting?  Ever wheel out a hottie and wheel back in a coldie?

DS: No, I actually think it’s better to let them die in there, and then I can take some pictures afterwards.

G&C: What do you think of Munging? And would you ever show it in a movie? In 3D?

DS: Personally, I think Munging is something that loved ones do in the privacy of their own homes. While I have not shot a full blown mung on film (yet), my horror-porns ‘Re-Penetrator’ and ‘The XXXorcist’ both feature scenes of internal matter expelling from a young woman’s vaginal area into the face (and genital area) of an un-expecting mungee. Will it happen in ‘Evil Head’? You’ll have to wait and see...I will tell you though, that ‘Evil Head’ will have all the chainsaw sex and tree rape that was missing from the original classic!

G&C: What’s next in the grave for Post Mortem Pinups?

DS: Correction: WHOs next in the grave for Post Mortem Pinups! We’ve already slaughtered eight vixens; Chapel Waste, Draven Star, Gia Paloma, Joanna Angel, Melodie Gore, Morgan Mae, Page Morgan and Riley Mason. I’m working towards four more to complete a 2010 calendar, and I have a lot of options for whose next on the chopping block...you’ll just have to stay tuned to www.postmortempinups.com to find out who is next! We also have a limited number of 11x17 full color prints available on the website...aside from ordering them online, Post Mortem Pinups are now on sale in the Los Angeles area exclusively at the awesome Hyaena Gallery in Burbank! You can go there and check them out in person at 1928 W. Olive Ave, Burbank CA 91506! www.hyaenagallery.com

G&C:  Outside of all the death and destruction, what else do you do? Or is it just that?

DS: I’ve been promoting my Punk Rock Holocaust series, two slasher comedy movies I directed based on the Vans Warped Tour now out on DVD with a third in development (www.punkrockholocaust.com). Outside of the bloodshed, we just finished our 7th annual rock n’ roll film fest, the Backseat Film Festival (www.backseatfilmfestival.com) with our production company Backseat Conceptions (www.backseatconceptions.com). In conjunction with the festival, we also opened a new indie theater and live arts venue in Philadelphia called the 941 Theater (www.941theater.com), which is the first indie movie theater to open in Philly in the last 10 years! And finally, I have been hosting and producing a lot of live events with Strip for Pain: America’s Most Dangerous Game Show (www.stripforpain.com). Go to the website and you will see why we call it that.

G&C: Fill in the blank; Girls and Corpses make me want to...?

DS: Girls and Corpses gives me a stiff one for sure!

www.postmortempinups.com