bsolutely one of the best webzines for devotees of monster movies, Horror-Wood offers extensive and serious coverage of everything and anything related to horror films. With news, a "digital dungeon" containing information on DVD releases, an extensive series of minireviews, convention listings and an archive of great horror links, this site is packed with everything fans need to know about horror films new and old.
The site's look is as retro as its content is cutting-edge, finding an appealing middle ground between the sterility of many HTML 'zines and the cheese of a horror print magazine like Fangoria. Large photos and screen captures from classic scare flicks abound, illustrating the first-rate text content, such as the current issue's feature article on filmmaker Coleman Francis, its review of Italian vintage horror flick Atom Age Vampire and a behind-the-scenes expose on the making of a lurid 1974 cannibal movie called Welcome to Arrow Beach.
Horror-Wood also offers a section for those seeking collectors' items and horror-themed toys, no matter how obscure. It lists the best places to find and order horror videos, and its links are well indexed and intriguing. The magazine's archived articles go back to 1997, offering hours of absorbing reading. The letters section—called Gore-respondence—answers reader questions thoughtfully and in detail.
With first-rate writing and a dedication to thorough coverage of the horror field, Horror-Wood reveals itself to be a cut above most movie-related Web sites, a genuine gem of the Internet that will draw readers back with every new issue.
— A.M. Dellamonica
Site of the Week—February 24, 2003
people's choice listing that polled about 3,000 movie fans to build its listing of dubious winners, this tribute to The Golden Turkey is yet another Web site dedicated to cataloging just how bad things can get in the world of film. Want to know who was chosen as worst actress over the course of her
career? The poll results on which movie features the worst romantic dialogue ever? All these facts—and many more—are showcased on this devoted and well-organized fan site.
The Golden Turkey Awards doesn't offer just one or two standard categories of awfulness, though it does cover obligatory subjects like Worst Film Ever (Plan Nine from Outer Space) and Worst Title (Rat Fink a Go Go). No, these prizes have been selected in many an esoteric category: Most Ridiculous Monster, Most Obnoxious Child Performer, Worst Vegetable Movie and Worst Performance by a Popular Singer. Though the site is not devoted exclusively to SF films, the nature of many of these award classes make genre pictures the obvious selections.
As a Web tribute to The Golden Turkey—which existed, originally, in the form of a 1978 book—the site lists not only the winners of each award but all of the major nominees, with each section offering photos, dates of production and further opinions by webmaster Andre Vandal on whether the award was deserved or other possibilities were overlooked.
The Web page also offers a challenge to students of film history: One of the movies mentioned on the site never existed. The original creators of the award invented a lone false film to see if visitors could spot their fake among the various howlers their readers had suggested as Turkey candidates. The ringer is buried in the Golden Turkey Awards site somewhere, just waiting for dedicated film buffs to discover it.
— A.M. Dellamonica
Site of the Week—February 18, 2003
urrently, the publisher Ace Books is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and continuing to issue important works in the science-fiction and fantasy field. But to many avid collectors of vintage paperbacks, Ace Books is known mainly for one rather odd invention in the history of book production: the Ace Double. These push-me-pull-you contrivances were two separate novels (or short-story collections, or a mix of novel and collection, or even non-fiction works) bound in the same package, back to back and upside down to each other. The lifespan of the Ace Double in all its various incarnations was 21 years, and anyone who grew up reading SF in the '50s, '60s and '70s will have fond memories of purchasing masterpieces such as Delany's Fall of the Towers trilogy and various Philip K. Dick mind-bogglers in Ace Double form. And of course, throughout this period, Ace also released many important books in more traditional singleton format.
All this marvelous history is on display at Michael Smith's The Ace Doubles (And Singles): Image Library, a visual treasure trove of cover art, buttressed by some intermittent yet thoughtful and vital text. Upon first reaching the site, the viewer is given a brief history of Ace's glory days, and then invited to view thumbnails from the ranks of either the doubles or the singles. Within these two major divisions, the categories of "Science Fiction," "Mystery," "Western" or "Potpourri" are further distinguished. Once a choice is made, the books appear in ascending order by serial number. Clicking on a number (unique to each side of a double) brings up the appropriate cover art. And what a parade of pulp beauty is on display! Covers by such famous artists as Valigursky and Emsh are rivaled only by the melodramatic inimitable one-sentence blurbs, many of them coined by Ace's legendary editor Donald Wollheim. This archive represents the core of SF over several decades, and if you can't afford Ace Double D-36, the famous edition of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Conqueror, at least you can admire it here.
Smith very helpfully lists the contents of almost all of the short-story collections. He comments on individual covers, such as that for K-175, Virginia Coffman's Moura, a Gothic romance which violates artistic conventions by having two women instead of one on the cover (and in a somewhat suspect clinch at that!). And he provides links to sites where the dedicated fan can purchase printed checklists of all Ace publications. But the reader should be warned: This site can induce intense jealousy and covetousness. I want my copy of Robert Bloch's The Will to Kill right now, to answer the question "Was he to be 'Jack the Ripper' all over again?"
— Paul Di Filippo
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