Necrophilia in popular culture

Necrophilia has been a topic in popular culture.

Romantic connections between love and death are a frequent theme in Western artistic expression. In the Greek legend of the Trojan War, the Greek hero Achilles slays the Amazon queen Penthesilea in a duel. Upon removing her helmet and seeing her face, Achilles falls in love with her and mourns her death. The soldier Thersites openly ridicules Achilles and accuses him of necrophilia. Achilles responds by promptly killing Thersites with a single blow. (In some traditions, Thersites' accusation is not unfounded — Achilles was so stricken by Penthesilea's beauty that he could not control his lust for her, even after her death.) In Gabrielle Wittkop's first novel Le Necrophile (1972), the protagonist is a bisexual antiques shop owner who has sex exclusively with corpses (of all ages and genders), which he digs up from the Montparnasse Cemetery and then throws into the river. In Cormac McCarthy's Child of God (1973), protagonist Lester Ballard finds a dead couple in a car, and carries the female corpse back to his cabin to have sex with it. After losing the corpse in a fire, he begins murdering women to create dead female sex partners for himself. In Stephen King's novel Under the Dome, Junior Rennie murders a woman whom he hates and has intercourse with her dead body. Georges Bataille's novella Story of the Eye ends with the main characters performing perverse and sacrilegious sexual acts on a passive priest, who is raped and strangled to death as he climaxes. After murdering him, the characters continue to perform sexual acts with his dismembered eyeball. Algernon Swinburne wrote a frankly necrophilic poem, "The Leper", in which a man keeps the body of his former lover in his house: "Love bites and stings me through, to see/Her keen face made of sunken bones./Her worn off eyelids madden me,/That were shot through with purple once." Oscar Wilde's play, Salome, is based on the Biblical story of a Judean princess who performs the Dance of the Seven Veils for the Tetrarch, Herod, in exchange for the head of John the Baptist. When Salome finally receives the Christian prophet's head, she addresses it in an erotic monologue that has highly suggestive necrophiliac overtones. Various artistic depictions of the story, particularly in the work of Gustave Moreau and Aubrey Beardsley, also hint at this subtext. In Christopher Moore's novel, Bloodsucking Fiends, when the police find the vampire Jody in Tommy's freezer, they think it's a dead body he's hiding so they send her to the morgue. The man working there is a necrophile and nearly molests her before she wakes up, giving him a heart attack that leads to his death. (She tucks his erection away so when he's found no one will suspect his dirty secret.) In Edgar Allan Poe's poem "Annabel Lee", there is a hint of the narrator's romantic necrophiliac desires, as suggested by his sleeping in his beloved's tomb all night. In C. M. Eddy, Jr.'s short story "The Loved Dead", the protagonist's actions revolve around his misunderstood feelings towards dead people. It starts with his own grandfather and progresses on toward necrophilia and becoming a serial killer to satisfy his desires. In Poppy Z. Brite's novel, Exquisite Corpse, the protagonist is a necrophile and serial killer. He explains his behavior as a compensation for loneliness. Richard Brautigan's novel Dreaming of Babylon: A Private Eye Novel 1942 features a coroner who speaks openly of his attraction to female corpses, though he denies having intercourse with them. In The Secret Texts trilogy by Holly Lisle, Andrew Sabir of the Hellspawn Trinity often rapes the corpses of the dead before his cousin, Crispin, buries them in his famous garden. Crispin and Anwyn, who are the other members of the Trinity, find this habit of his disgusting, and make that known even in their introduction. Often, Andrew's victims are children, as the energy of children, especially little girls, is considered by those who practice both Wolf and Dragon magic to be the purest. In the video game The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, there is a mission in which the player must anger a creature called a Dremora into attacking. When the creature finally snaps, it threatens to rape the player's remains, mockingly promising that it will "be gentle." In the sequel, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, there is a Dunmer named Falanu Hlaalu, an alchemist in the city of Skingrad who rather suspiciously asks if you know the fine for necrophilia in Cyrodiil. If you choose to tell her the fine, which is 500 gold, she says enthusiastically: "That's nothing compared to Morrowind. Thanks." Other characters living in the city note that they have seen her in the graveyard with an odd smile on her face. In Grand Theft Auto IV the player meets a character named "Eddie Low", who is a serial killer, cannibal and necrophiliac, twice. The first time, he asks for a ride to the docks, where he disposes of a victim. The second time, the player character insults him, and Eddie attacks with a knife, intending to have sex with the player character's remains. The player is forced to kill Eddie. In Hideo Yamamoto's original manga of Ichi the Killer, the crime scene cleaner Inoue is depicted as a necrophile, and shown in silhouette having sex with the corpse of a 17 year old girl whilst his coworkers prepare to bury her. Samuel Delany's 1969 novel, Hogg, is replete with detailed descriptions of erotic necrophilia. Patrick Bateman, the protagonist of the novel and film American Psycho, is depicted as engaging in acts of necrophilia, with bodies and parts of his victims. In Neil Gaiman's short story "Snow, Glass, Apples", the prince of Snow White is reimagined as having necrophiliac like sexual tastes, preferring that his partners lie still and virtually unmoving while they have sex, to the extent that he is seduced by the vampire esque Snow White. In Japanese manga and anime, the topic is many times present in the Ero guro subgenre. In the first chapter of Kaori Yuki's manga, Ludwig Revolution, Blanche discovers Prince Ludwig is a necrophile when she finds all the corpses in his bedroom. In Barbara Gowdy's short story "We Seldom Look on Love", a main character is depicted as a necrophile. Her lover is forced to take his life to be involved with her. Under writer Geoff Johns, Green Lantern villain Black Hand was reimagined as a necrophile. In Angela Carter's short story "The Snow Child" (published in The Bloody Chamber), the Count rapes the corpse of the girl. The 2011 video game L. A. Noire features a fictional necrophiliac named John Ferdinand Jamison. In the case "The Studio Secretary Murder," Ferdinand confesses to kissing and putting lipstick on the corpse of murder victim Evelyn Summers, much to the disgust of the player, Cole Phelps', partner, Rusty Galloway, who punches Jamison in the face two separate times. The sixth chapter of Derek Pell's Doktor Bey's Book of the Dead includes a listing of the "7 Joys of Necrophilia". In Tamsyn Muir's novel Gideon the Ninth, the character Harrowhark Nonagesimus is shown to have fallen in love with the corpse of Alecto the First, referred to as "the Body". In the sequel novel, Harrow the Ninth, the Lyctor Gideon the First (potentially possessed by the spirit of his cavalier, Pyrrha Dve) is shown kissing the corpse of fellow Lyctor Cytherea the First (potentially possessed by the spirit of Pyrrha's lover Commander Wake); another character suggests that he may have also engaged in necrophilia with the corpse. In Supervert's collection, Necrophilia Variations, the stories "appear to be drawn straight from Aggrawal's ten tier classification of necrophilia, but reimagined by Bataille or the Marquis de Sade." In the Japanese visual novel No Salvation, the character Satori Nakahara is an assassin who rapes the corpses of his victims. In a flashback, he is shown to have masturbated to his mother’s corpse after killing her.

In The Strange World of Coffin Joe (1968), a short story titled "Tara" revolves around a lead character who breaks into the mausoleum containing the coffin of a beautiful woman, who he saw passing daily. He removes her burial wedding dress, has sex with the body and performs foot fetishism. The B movie Sweet Kill (1973) revolves around a lead character who becomes aroused only by dead bodies. The 1976 film In the Realm of the Senses fictionalizes the case of Sada Abe. Sada, a former prostitute who now works as a maid in a hotel begins an intense affair with its owner, Kichizo Ishida, that consists of sexual experiments and various self indulgences. Ishida leaves his wife to pursue his affair with Sada. Sada becomes increasingly possessive and jealous of him, and he more eager to please her. Their mutual obsession escalates to the point where Ishida finds she is most excited by strangling him during lovemaking, and he is killed in this fashion. Sada then severs his penis and writes, "Sada Kichi the two of us forever," in blood on his chest. The 1977 John Waters film Desperate Living contains a scene where Princess Coo Coo (Mary Vivian Pearce) is seen in bed with her recently deceased boyfriend. In 1980, artist John Duncan produced Blind Date, a film in which he reportedly had sex with a human cadaver. The protagonist in Dominique Deruddere's 1987 film Crazy Love, based on various writings by author and poet Charles Bukowski, has sex with a dead woman in the third and final act. The 1987 and 1991 controversial German underground films Nekromantik and its sequel (both directed by Jörg Buttgereit) offer a graphic portrayal of sexual necrophilia. In a scene in the film Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, the character Alfredo Sawyer is depicted as passionately kissing a severed and heavily decayed head as he disposes of body parts in a swamp. In the 1990 film Singapore Sling, a daughter is shown having sex with her late father, who is now a mummified corpse. A 1991 Taggart episode, "Nest of Vipers", featured a plotline where a necrophiliac used venomous animals to commit murders. The 1994 film Aftermath directed by Nacho Cerdà deals with necrophilia in a morgue. The 1996 Canadian film Kissed, starring Molly Parker, centers around a young woman's increasingly romantic fascination with corpses. In the Family Guy episode "Death is a Bitch", Death (represented by the Grim Reaper) continues to have intercourse with a woman after he kills her with his touch. In the later episode "I Take Thee Quagmire", Glen Quagmire asks Death if he can have the corpse of his deceased ex wife "for a few minutes", implying that, among other things, Quagmire could be a necrophile. This was proved in the episode "And Then There Were Fewer" when Quagmire leaves with Stephanie's dead body. The 2000 film Quills depicts a dream where the Abbé in charge of the Marquis de Sade's asylum fondles and fornicates with a dead laundress. In it, she comes back to life during sex, then returns to a corpse once he realizes his actions. Takashi Miike's 2001 film Visitor Q contains a scene where a man rapes and accidentally kills a woman, and then decides to have sex with her before chopping her body into pieces. While having sex, the body goes into rigor mortis and his penis gets stuck. In the 2001 film Mortel Transfert, a psychoanalyst thwarts an attempt by the ground keeper to engage sexual activity with the body of his recently deceased client he was attempting to dispose of. In the 2002 independent horror film I'll Bury You Tomorrow, the protagonist, a necrophiliac, pursues employment at a mortuary for access to cadavers. In the television series Sons of Anarchy, a club member named Tig Trager admits to the club president that he engages in sexual activities with corpses. In Haute Tension, the antagonist performs fellatio on himself with a severed head. The 2004 film Murder Set Pieces features the main character (Sven Garrett) performing fellatio on himself with what is later revealed to be a severed head. The Season 2 episode of Puppets Who Kill, "Dan and the Necrophiliac", features a female necrophiliac who is caught having sex with her dead uncle at his funeral. Later in the episode the character of Dan Barlow (Dan Redican), who is attracted to her, fakes his own death so that she will violate his corpse. In Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects, Otis B. Driftwood is a rapist and a necrophiliac. He is seen in one scene sleeping with a dead body of a woman he presumably killed, and when shown a picture of a dead cheerleader and told that "she isn't so fuckable now", Otis responds that she is. The film Freddy vs. Jason depicts a scene where Freddy Krueger has sex with the body of a dead girl; also, in Wildstorm's Nightmare on Elm Street comics, Freddy is implicated as having molested the dead bodies of children. The Season 3 episode of Nip/Tuck titled "Frankenlaura" features a necrophiliac mortician who preserves the body of his dead sister in order to make love to it. In the animated TV series Drawn Together, Captain Hero has experienced attraction to corpses on multiple occasions, and at one point throws a tantrum due to being unable to find a dead body he was told about. The Criminal Minds episode "Cold Comfort" features a necrophiliac serial killer who kills women so he can have sex with the bodies, believing them to be his dead au pair Abbey. Also, in the episode "Sex, Birth, Death", Dr. Reid is sought out by Nathan Harris (Anton Yelchin), a teenage boy who is having necrophiliac urges, much to his disturbance. Nathan is then psychoanalyzed, where he admits that the sight of the cadavers that his mother (a college professor) works with sexually arouses him. The character Theodore "T Bag" Bagwell in Prison Break "raped and killed children, and not always in that order". In the 2009 film Necromentia, the character Hagen is accused of having engaged in necrophilia on multiple occasions with his dead lover. In Season 2 of the TV series The Following, identical twin Luke Gray appears to have an interest in necrophilia. In the 2012 film 3AM, segment A Funeral Home, the story centers on junior mortician Tod, who develops an intimate relationship with Cherry's corpse. In the 2012 Japanese animated series Psycho Pass, one of the sub antagonists Rikako Ouryou is involved in acts of necrophilia before performing plastination on them. In the 2014 film The Midnight After, a segment depicts a certain character briefly occupied with necrophiliac activity on another previous passenger. In the 2015 film The Corpse of Anna Fritz, an orderly at a hospital and his friend have sex with Anna's corpse and begins raping it. In the 2016 film The Neon Demon, a female character has sex with the deceased body of another woman in a morgue, leading the media to call it 'lesbian necrophilia'. In the 2020 film Her Name Was Christa, the main character has sex with his dead girlfriend after she overdoses on drugs. In the Solar Opposites episode "The Unstable Grey Hole", Korvo mentions that he often digs up human corpses from a cemetery and has sex with them. In an episode of the original Charmed, one of the sisters makes a joke about Piper being a necrophiliac.