Gorezone article: "Homemade Horrorzines"

Written by Fangoria/Gorezone managing editor Michael Gingold, who was still publishing his own Scareaphanalia newsletter at the time, this special report on the late '80s/early '90s fanzine scene appeared in Gorezone #18 during the summer of '91 -- just as the final issue of Temple of Schlock was reaching one hundred and twenty-five subscribers around the world.


If I had kept it together for a few more issues, this piece would've done us some good. Instead, I had to refund all of the new subscription money a few months later when I failed to get issue #25 together (more on that later in the weekend) and decided to close the Temple doors.


Of all the fanzines profiled in this article, only Shock Cinema, Little Shoppe of Horrors and Video Watchdog are still being published today, nearly 20 years later.


Two of the most popular 'zines of the day, Psychotronic Video and The Gore Gazette, didn't make it into this article; GG's Rick Sullivan was purposely excluded at the request of Fangoria/Gorezone editor Tony Timpone, who Sullivan regularly antagonized in the pages of his 'zine in the wake of their controversial appearance together on the infamous anti-slasher episode of The Morton Downey Jr. Show two years earlier, while Michael J. Weldon of PV simply failed to return the questionnaire that Gingold had sent out to all of the editors.


Before he started the Psychotronic Video in 1989, Weldon wrote a column in High Times that often mentioned the do-it-yourself 'zines; the plug he gave Temple of Schlock in 1988 brought us more subscribers than we got from any other source except Factsheet Five, the 'zine of 'zines (also now defunct).


Looking over this article now, I don't know what surprises me more: that I referred to MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER as "schlock" or the fact that I never saw a single issue of Killer Kung-Fu Enema Nurses on Crack!