From the Vault: A Look Back at Some Scream Fan Pages

Originally published September 20th, 2020.

As any long-time readers will know this blog originated as 90’s Horror Review, with a specialized focus on 90’s teen horror. As I’ve grown older, I’ve developed an intense nostalgia for the horror films released when I was in high school and they tend not to get as much attention as some of the more beloved franchises of the 70’s and 80’s. I attempted to fill a void with this site and continue to promote my love of 90’s horror as much as I can.

The creation of this site was influenced by another horror site from the past, House of Horrors. It was there my taste in horror was crafted and it really helped set me out on this fandom that continues twenty years later. But House of Horrors wasn’t the only horror site around in the 90’s. There were plenty of horror fan sites popping up all over and great conversations taking place on newsgroups, chatrooms, and forums.

Occasionally, I like to do deep searches for any old fan sites that I can find online. I love to read the rumors that existed and see if they came true or not. I love seeing the passion and creativity that fans puts into these sites, because unlike today, websites weren’t so cookie cutter. There was no Google Image Search, so people actually scanned images and used them for graphics. So much time and effort was put into these sites, but sadly, its hard to tell because they just aren’t as polished as the blogs and websites we see now.

I sometimes think about the day when all these websites will be lost. They are already difficult to find, so its only a matter of time before the internet archeology becomes impossible and it’ll be like they never existed at all.

So, I’ve decided to honor these websites (and in a way archive them) via my blog here. I’m going to take a look back at some of these sites as I run across them and hopefully you’ll find them as interesting as I do. Let’s check out the first two sites today.

Scream Freak
http://screamfreak.tripod.com/

Scream Freak is actually a pretty nice looking website, designed by a sixteen year old in 1997. The website was made prior to Scream 3’s release so it features a page where fans emailed in theories on what would happen in Scream 3.

Scream Freak has a bunch of screencaps and a unique feature the webmaster typed over some of the photos and turned them into virtual cards to send to your friends for various occasions.

The Guest Book is dead and the old chat room doesn’t work, but the web counter is still up and states that I’m the 688 visitor to check out Scream Freak.

I also admired the small little .gif found at the bottom of the page.

Katie’s Scream Pages
http://members.tripod.com/~k8t_c/

A lot of old websites featured multiple websites anchored by a static page. This is one of them. The webmaster Katie has a collection of pages covering all three Scream films, both I Know What You Did Last Summer movies, Titanic, South Park, and Grease.