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| Wolfie, Frankie and Drac: Internet failures all. |
Remember that Internet gold rush of the 1990s, when everybody was scrambling to buy up any potentially lucrative URLs just as quickly as possible? Yeah, well, that's over. Know how I know? Because horror's three greatest names -- Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolf Man -- have utterly failed to become desirable Internet addresses. Go ahead and add a .com to any of their hallowed names, and you know what you get? A whole lotta nothing, that's what!
Read on... if you dare!
The site: Dracula.com
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| Might as well be Dracula smiling and wearing a backpack. |
Yes, dear readers, that uninspiring screenshot shows you what you get when you type dracula.com into your browser's address bar. It's one of those lousy generic placeholder pages. Apparently, the domain name is for sale. At least there are links to "Real Vampire Photos" and "Dracula Games," but there's also a shameful link to "Bratz Girls Games." How embarrassing, Dracula, for a nobleman such as yourself to be dragged down to the level of the slutty-looking proletariat!
The site: Frankenstein.com
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| Boris Karloff inadvertently shills for a "web production" company. |
What you get here is something called Castle Pink Frankenstein, apparently a "web production company." (That exists? That's a thing?) Their awkwardly-worded sales spiel reads like this:
"CPF Web Production has worked with individual artists, small business, non-profits and politicians. Our main goal is to empower it’s clients with a web presence that works for them and to make it easy and affordable to keep the site updated. We deal with customized and integrated Word Press blogs, databases, social networking integration, Content Management Systems, iWeb customization (manage your own site once we build it for you!), eCommerce and of course standard plain old web pages."
The site: Wolfman.com
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| Note the lack of wolves, were or otherwise. |
"This website reflects my Love of Macaws, Wolves, and Dogs." The fact that wolves get second billing in that sentence is a clear, early indication that this site maybe isn't going to be a tribute to Universal's Wolf Man, as played by Lon Chaney, Jr. (In case you're wondering, adding "the" to the name doesn't help. Thewolfman.com is just another domain-for-sale placeholder page, lamer even than Dracula's.) Wolfman.com turns out to be the personal page of someone named Jim Morris. The site's contents seem to consist of pictures of Morris' pets and brief articles about those same pets. So he's a "wolf man" in the sense that he's a man who likes wolves. Just like how so-called "cat people" are not really human-feline hybrids.
So these sites fail to make the grade, horror wise. What if you're opposed to monsters and want to call in the professionals? Your first move might be to type ghostbusters.com into your browser. So what do you get when you do that?
Well, this...
The site: Ghostbusters.com
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| Still at it after more than a quarter-century. Nice to know. |
It's a very fancy, rather thoughtful promotional site for the Ghostbusters franchise. Once you get past the loading screen (above), you're taken to a city street with lots of clickable buildings. Yes, the theme song starts playing after a while. And, yes, the Ecto-1 zooms by occasionally. Slimer and Marshmallow Man put in their expected appearances. Apparently, the first film had a theatrical re-release in October 2011. Did you know about that? I didn't. Anyway, the site's most interesting detail might be something written in small type at the bottom of the screen...
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| So You Think You Can Ghostbust? |
Can you read it? It says "Employment Opportunities." An employment opportunity? With the freakin' Ghostbusters? Ye gods! But hold on, Tex. You might think you're going to be the next Winston Zeddemore, but the link just takes you to the Sony Pictures Entertainment Career Connection, where you'll find such unappetizing employment opportunities as "Client Production Services Manager." So, no, you won't be bustin' any ghosts
Le sigh.