As you may have noticed, there's been a lot of changes at darkwebonline.com, the upshot of which is that we have lost our database, which contained over 8,000 entries of most of the horror, science fiction and fantasy films ever made, over 600 reviews (which we still have in word format) and data on all the films we have in stock. We have also lost our forum, which was intended to be a big part of our future plans, hosting the Hall of Fame polls and inductee profiles, as well as reviews with pictures, links, trailer videos and graphic images.

Darkwebonline.com was originally set up be a genre specific version of the IMDB, a complete database of horror, science fiction and fantasy film from 1911 (the first feature length films) to the present day. We wanted to sell as many of the films as possible to genre fans, both on collectable VHS and nice shiny DVDs, while entertaining readers with reviews, features, lists and profiles. We also wanted to offer a forum to fans to discuss film and comment on darkwebonline.

Unfortunately, in many ways, we became victims of our own success. Our web hosts decided that our database and forum were too big for them to host, so they had to be removed. For a while, it looked like the end but, with a bit of creative thinking, we realised we could still carry out many of our previous functions, using different means.

The biggest problem is that all our stock was listed on the database, and our reviews were on both the forum and the database, now both lost. However, recent changes on ebay have allowed us to list more stock than ever, so much of our items will be available on there. Not all of it is listed on ebay though, so if you're struggling to find what you want in our stock, you can submit a videotracker request and we'll check to see if we have it in stock. Even if we don't have it, we'll search for it for you, with no obligation to buy.

Regarding reviews, and indeed the loss of the database information, we are planning to turn a negative into a positive. It has been an ambition of ours for some time to draw a complete-as-possible chronological list of horror, sci-f and fantasy movies. This will become our History of Horror project. We will shortly transfer much of the data from the old database to webpages, which will include links to film reviews on webpages, which, much like our forum, will features pics, videos, and interactive features. Our current Reviews page will soon become a A-Z, if you'd prefer to browse that way, and the old Alternative Titles lists, which were "archived" when AKAs were added to our database, will be revived and incorporated into the project.

Other features have been affected too. Our top 100 lists, now incorporated into the Movie Accolades feature, originally linked to reviews held in the database. This is of course no longer possible, so the Top 100 lists will revert to webpage-based lists with links. Our Hall of Fame polls, formally held on the forum, will now be held elsewhere, possibly even on our Facebook page. 

We also had a section of our forum dedicated to promoting new films. This will now be incorporated into our planned "features" page, which will be revived after 10 years(!), so please feel free to send us your promotional materials at newfilm@darkwebonline.com. 

So obviously, we are going to be busy rebuilding our site over the never few months. We'll let you know via Twitter and Facebook of changes and updates, but in the meantime, enjoy what the site still has to offer, and help us stay afloat by buying from us on ebay or even donating via paypal at the bottom of our homepage! Thanks, and enjoy! - W.S. Sharpe

Early Seasonal Greetings to you all!

We’ve made a lot of changes to the site (www.darkwebonline.com) of late. The home page has received quite an extensive remodelling and we’ve improved many of the feature pages, such as the Hall of Fame, and introduced new landing pages for other pages, such as the Darkweboline Accolades page, the Reviews page and Films to Buy page.

In additional, we’ve now incorporated movie AKAs into the database, which not only allows you to search by alternative titles, but also allows searches for titles beginning with ‘A’, ‘An’ and ‘The’. Naturally, with over 6,000 records to update, this has kept us busy for sometime!

If that wasn’t enough, we’ve uploaded a brand new forum which now allows you to upload videos among other features and, from our point-of-view, it has much better spam prevention features. We are also incorporating many of our written articles into the forum, which again is a time-consuming activity.

On top of all this, we’re currently compiling the Fantasy 100 – a slow process since I really want to see every highly recommended film before finalising the list. We never realised how many good films we have still to see!

One of the issues with compiling lists is the classification of films. Our site is strictly for HSF (horror, sci-fi and fantasy film), and many films have only slight genre elements that allow us to classify them as appropriate for our site. While this allows us to add more films into our catchment group, it does mean that films with only minor elements qualify for top/bottom 100 lists. So, for instance, films that are great thrillers - but not necessarily great horrors, are still in contention for a place in one of the top 100 lists.

I recently came across an old forum discussion that criticised our Top 100 Horror list for including a number of films. Some, such as ‘Nightmare Alley’ and ‘The Scarlet Claw’, in which the supernatural elements are proven to be fake, and ‘Night Must Fall’ (a psycho thriller) are fair comment, but other inclusions criticised were ridiculous. ‘Young Frankenstein’ may be a comedy, but it’s certainly a horror movie too. 'The Night Stalker', and it's sequel, 'The Night Strangler' it was suggested, shouldn't be included because they are TV movies. Not sure of the logic behind this, a great film is a great film, no matter who makes it. Our Sci-fi 100 includes other made-for-TV classics like the Peter Cushing version of '1984', the original TV version of 'Quatermass and the Pit' and, best of all, Spielberg's classic 'Duel'. It would be a sorry day when we remove those films in favour of theatrical releases like Michael Bay's grotesque 'Transformers'. The inclusion of ‘The Elephant Man’ was criticised too; I assume because John Merrick didn’t go around terrorising people. But if this is the case, should horror classics such as ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ be included? The horror of ‘The Elephant Man’ is in our society castigating and exploiting someone based on their appearance alone. Hence, ‘The Elephant Man’ counts – The Cher film ‘Mask’ doesn’t. But most of the discussion was based around one film – ‘Silence of the Lambs’.

Quite how a film about a cannibal and a cross-dressing serial killer wouldn’t be a horror be beyond me. Many scenes in ‘Silence of the Lambs’ are constructed to terrify. If ‘Lambs’ is not HSF, then neither is ‘Halloween’, ‘Friday the 13th’ or ‘Psycho’. I have to wonder if people don’t like to think of ‘Silence of the Lambs’ as a horror movie because it’s clever and received critical acclaim and Academy Awards. It's one thing for cinema snobs to dislike horror movies, but when genre fans themselves start to disown films because they’re mainstream or, simply, good, then you have to start worrying! Horror doesn’t have to be cheap and nasty - it's usually better when it isn't.

Well that’s enough ranting from me now – enjoy the improved site and let us know below what your thoughts are regarding genre classification and the films mentioned above. Or take a look at our Top 100 lists on the Accolades page and let us know if you disagree with any of these inclusions!

Until next time...

Over at www.darkwebonline.com we're tried to shake things up a bit! We're introducing a new HSF Hall of Fame to replace the current Profiles page. Every month, we're going to add a new star from the word of horror, sci-fi and fantasy film to our Hall of Fame. It could be a director, actor, writer or special effects man. It could be a artist nominated for a single great contribution or a prolific hack. You decide!

The first five names are up in a poll on our forum. You don't have to join, unless you want to make suggestions for next months poll. This months ends of 31st October - Halloween fittingly enough! Play your part in our first introduction!

We've also added twitter and facebook buttons to our site, so now you can see if we have any new updates without repeatedly checking the site. click these to follow/like us.

We're also working on the top 100 Fantasy Film list. Again, you can contribute by make suggestions in our forum. If we agree, adding a review to the forum will also ensure you work is part of the top 100 when it's eventually published!

Finally, we're trying to get our revamped forum off the ground. In addition to the above interactive elements, we've added a few other suggested categories such as "Name that Film" and "New Films", the latter is an excellent place for independent film makes to add their reviews.

So lots going on and plenty of opportunity for you to get involved. We'll be adding some new stock soon, look out for that too!

'Til Next time,

W.S.Sharpe

P.S.

RIP Herbert Lom. Another genre legend now departed.

Get Your News Widget

Welcome to the new darkwebonline.com blog! Here I'll add some comments about, or (loosely!) related to horror, sci-fi and fantasy (HSF) film that don't really fit in with the rest of the site. You also have the chance to reply to any of our comments are ask us any questions you may have about our site. I'm new to this so go easy!

First let me introduce myself. My name is Wayne Sharpe and I have been the owner/chief writer/editor/cleaner/mailman on darkwebonline.com for 10 years now. I have been watching HSF movies obsessively since I was 9 (that being 1987 in case you're wondering). This obsession led me to the misguided belief that one day I could make a living from my interests - hence darkwebonline.com!

Our initial aim was to provide as complete a database on HSF as possible - but then imdb.com pretty much made that idea pointless! Then our aim was to provide the best in rare and obscure VHS from across the world - then cheap but high quality DVDs and online downloads came along and blew that out of the water! Oh well...

So why we might not be at the, err cutting edge of movie websites that we once aimed to be, we are still here, still selling rare VHS and DVDs, and still particularly productive in our reviews and features department.

As touched on earlier, I'm an avid fan of HSF (I'm watching 'The Strange Possession of Mrs. Oliver' as I write) and I may touch on some of the films I'm watching here..if I'm not inspired enough to write a full review.

So come back and visit this page and read my insane ramblings - but don't forget to leave comments! It'll be fun to know people are actually reading this...

W.S. Sharpe

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