he number of classic SF TV shows being released on DVD increases on an almost daily basis, expanding fans' chances to catch overlooked treasures of the past. As a result, sites like the U.K.-based Cult TV International—Web pages that celebrate the rich history of televised SF—are more of an asset all the time, bringing fresh interest to old programs by helping interested viewers discover previously unseen shows, revisit childhood favorites and explore the programs that influenced the more recent crop of SF hits.
Many cult TV sites concentrate on the oldest of the old—series from the '60s like Adam Adamant Lives! and The Prisoner. Cult TV International doesn't ignore these mainstays by any means, but the site also contains listings for newer shows: Buffy and Angel, for example, Smallville and the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. Each listing describes the show's concept and characters as well as providing cast information, photos and, in many cases, episode guides.
Cult TV International was revamped and updated in March and is still adding new content. Its discussion forums are shiny and uncluttered—good posting sites for fans who find breaking into established communities a struggle—and its review section currently contains a lone essay on what defines a cult TV series. The Links and Chat sections are still under construction. In the Polls area, visitors can vote for their favorite Doctor Who regeneration, Starfleet captain and incarnation of James Bond.
Up-to-date, informative and dedicated to spreading the word about both famous and obscure genre TV programs, Cult TV International only promises to get better as its site renovations continue.
—A.M. Dellamonica
Site of the Week—April 11, 2005
he official site for Sacramento's popular Trash Film Festival, Trash Film Orgy celebrates bad cinema with relish. Loud, proud and not always in the best of taste, this page is the place to surf to when seeking oddball movie recommendations of the lowbrow kind.
What bottom-of-the-barrel SF movies does TFO recommend? The ever-more-dated Death Race 2000 makes the list, as does a 1959 atomic disaster movie from Japan, The H-Man. Amid howlers like Pumpkinhead and an Alice Cooper flick called Monster Dog, though, a few genuine gems glint atop the garbage heap, like Bubba Ho-Tep and Barbarella, Queen of the Galaxy. Each movie listing comes with a lengthy and irreverent review by site staffers, along with a shot of the poster and a couple of stills.
As with many cult film sites, TFO's features section is regrettably sparse; its articles are well written and interesting but few in number. Its galleries, on the other hand, have been flooded with hundreds of pictures by festival enthusiasts. Many of these images are self-referential parodies of films like Flash Gordon and The Matrix, photo manipulations that transform their subjects to Trash Gordon and The MaTrash. The site has a links page and runs fan polls—the Shatner haiku contest in the poll archives is a don't-miss—as well as a "Today in Trash Film History" section.
If Trash Film Orgy is lurid, cheesy, definitely not work-safe and utterly inappropriate for kids, it is also sincerely enthusiastic about trash cinema and its history. For anyone who looks at a screamingly bad movie poster and feels a sense of guilty pleasure, a quick visit to this site will provide many ideas for future outings to the video store.
—A.M. Dellamonica
Site of the Week—April 4, 2005
very science-fiction fan has done it at least once: watched a movie and thought, "I wonder if they have a soundtrack for this?" Sci-Fi Film Music answers that question with an exhaustive index of speculative fiction soundtracks for film and television.
The alphabetical index spans decades of science fiction history, including The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet, Alien, Logan's Run, Battlestar
Galactica, Space: 1999, I, Robot, Hellboy, Chronicles of Riddick and hundreds more. The details offered for each entry vary greatly, but all contain track lists. A good number also have liner notes taken from the album, as well as links to online reviews.
The "Specials" section focuses in on soundtracks for science fiction's most popular series, namely Star Trek, Star Wars and Babylon 5, as well as the out-of-genre, but still excellent, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. These areas attempt to chronicle every track ever released for each series, as well as any variants they may have spawned.
Perhaps the most interesting portion of the site is the "Bootlegs" section, which lists numerous unofficial soundtracks and might prove useful for completists searching for the true soundtrack to a given movie.
—Ken Newquist
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