The Return of TEMPLE OF SCHLOCK
The Return of Temple of Schlock: 1987-1991, 2007-????
LINK
Yes, it’s back. In case you may not know, TEMPLE OF SCHLOCK was a funky typewritten b-grade film fanzine published by yours truly and co-editor Chris Poggiali. We published 24 issues from 1987-1991, and I was fifteen when the first issue came out. Chris wasn’t much older…
It actually all started with DR. BUTCHER M.D. Chris took the time to introduce me to the art of being a true B-Grade audience member: high doses of sugar and repeated prolonged exposure. This allowed us to reach certain levels — ultimately sugar, eyestrain and sleeplessness combined while perversity filmed in 35 millimeter flashing afore your eyes — hysteria, giggling, shocked hysteria. DR. BUTCHER M.D., yes. But that was just the beginning. While Chris reveled in his penchant for the best in true sleaze, including but not limited to: biker-flicks, blaxploitation, Corman and UA productions, I found myself best in the slasher or horror genre and began reviewing a wide swath of trash. From 1987 to 1991 I must have reviewed about 120 films. And seen a lot bit more. Though my favorite films list is only slightly indicative of my schlock exposure (and non-existent), it’s fair game to say I’ve seen a lot more junky movies than the average bear. A lot. Let’s put it this way, I rent SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAAAADASS REVENGE just to see my wife squirm. So I’m still something of a troll.
The thing that still amuses me is that we were actually publishing relatively well-written (besides my stuff) and educated essays and reviews on the underbelly of cinema. We had long-winded retrospectives of Hammer Films, Interviews w/ Filmmakers, Television Series Overviews, and regular columnists from all reaches of the nation. If my memory serves me properly, we peaked at about 175 subscribers. So, y’know, I would type up all this stuff, lay it out with film stills or ads, go down to the kinkos, make 200 copies, come home, collate, staple, address, well, you get the gist…
While I did a lion’s share of the actual typing and photocopying and all that crap for about 80% of the issues, it’s Chris who was and still is the true master. He has gone on to continue his work in film study and development, whereas I’ve chosen music and fiction. Matter of fact, he frequently publishes articles and reviews, most well-known being FANGORIA, so pick up a copy today and look up the Po-Man’s ramblings. I left film appreciation and went onto a number of other interesting literary and troublesome publishing projects, which I’ll mention below for you purists.
My time as main typist and cleric ended abruptly in 1990 as I graduated high school and my mind became preoccupied with college and women. In retrospect I pretty much slagged off, and while my appreciation for film is forever deepened, it was just a passing phase. Or certain aspects of it anyway. What bothered me was that I’d lost the ‘fellowship’ of watching these films, and soon me ‘screening’ something for review meant me alone in some living room carefully watching with notebook and pencil as if people valued my uninformed opinions. I think I initially exposed myself to the whole thing because I enjoyed the interesting company of peers who weren’t dumb jocks and actually attempted to appreciate the best (and worst) that art and life in general had to offer.
Anyway, we ended up making a lot of issues and not any money and it became a labor of love for our film appreciation. At this point in time, ‘blogging,’ or ‘internet’ was simply not among the common populace, so receiving things in the ‘snail mail’ called ‘fanzines’ was still a common occurrence. It was from inspiration of these other late 80s photocopied ‘zines, such as SUBHUMAN, SCAREPHENALIA, SLIMETIME, THE TERRORNAUTS and the like that gave birth to TEMPLE OF SCHLOCK. There was a long-running magazine entitled FACTSHEET 5 that once, many moons ago, would list the literally hundreds (thousands?) of various fan-wrought zines, and we had our ‘zine listed in there. Apparently we made the hall of shame once (my fault) for me forgetting to mail a subscriber a 75c issue (you know you’ve got fans when…). Ah, memories. For those of you who remember FS5, you know what a tome it was and how very intense the self-publishing ‘industry’ was in 1990. By 2000, it had been literally sharded into memories. The internet has replaced most of this inspiration and perspiration.
Anyhow, Chris has currently taken up the arduous task of scanning in — page by page — all of the old issues of TOS. Please feel free to check out our cyber-rebirth, sixteen years later! (see link above). It is a very nice trip down memory lane for me. Make sure to click on PHOTOS. This is the ‘entering’ of the Temple, if you will…
Now, for those of you still reading, I moved into fiction after TOS, publishing a one-off poetry chapbook called DARK ALLEY in 1990. When I enrolled in SUNY at Fredonia in 1991, I published five issues of an underground photorag called THINK! (1991-1992) (we actually mimeographed a few issues — if anyone has any of these, please get in touch with me, I will pay cash for original copies.) I think we hung it up with our special “Black History Month,” issue, which featured a cover with Malcolm X and Abe Lincoln debating their various nefarious quotes back and forth. This was the issue that the administration put a stop to us with. I believe the five infamous issues of THINK! may be archived at the campus library. I ended up getting a bit of flack for this and was spoken to more than once by my staff advisor.
After this, I went on to be a columnist for THE LEADER, the SUNY Fredonia paper during 1993-1994. I was loved and hated for my columns; little did I know that this would be up to now the most readers I would have at one time. These loosely riveted 500 word-ers covered controversial subjects (most of these 24 columns I’ve recovered). However, my writing style came under scrutiny by staff and administration alike. To my glee, a number of professors touted me as something of a talent, but most of my ‘writing’ peers slagged me. See, instead of me trotting out my opinion in first person, I decided to use dialog as in fiction, injecting very little opinion on the events I laid out. I took the show, don’t tell attitude.
Of course I added my thoughts, I figured the narrator would be a wide berthed fella, but the main secret sauce of the whole thing was a simple grammatical technique I employed: I would often in the column utilize second person. This drew fire from purists, but my editor Darren Klute believed in me and I turned in 24 columns in total, a number of them winning me certain editor’s choice awards. One professor even took a column as a final essay since he dis-liked the proper one I’d turned in.
After college I did write a number of short stories and managed to publish about six of them in similar ‘fanzines.’ Some titles were “Cawrl and the Boys,” “If You Find Bhudda on the Path, Kill Him” and others. I published a few chapbooks of my poetry and the like. Now as music began to grow in my life, my pen has turned to songwriting, but I have never left writing (as you can see) and am currently selling my batches of new tales successfully.
Perhaps the most exciting thing about all this is that now that Chris and I are sort of ‘virtually’ back into the TEMPLE OF SCHLOCK publishing (even though we’ve not seen each other since the early 90s), we can continue to add new reviews and the like. Hopefully we’ll be tapping into the new folks out there who love old cinema and would like to contribute to its appreciation. I thought it would be a nice idea to only review films that were shown prior to the original TOS’ door closing in 1991. Not as if there’s a whole lot of quality schlock that’s come out since; anyway, hope to see you soon at the Temple…
