f you think movie fanatics are people who stand in line for a few hours for a premiere, or someone who can recite the entire script of The Wizard of Oz, or a couple who name their first child, say, Scarlet, well...those are mere fans. Come along for a tour of movie pages created by some individuals on the Web, and you'll get to know some true fanatics.

The nice thing about a fan's page -- as opposed to those put out by the studios themselves -- is that there's something fresh, fun, and unpredictable about them, the kind of feel the studios would like to achieve but simply can't. Fans don't bore you with the press release stuff (or as we call it, "dreck"). They just feature things so cool that they're worth the effort of scanning or typing in, and worth showing to the rest of the world. You'll find whole movie scripts on some pages and lively debates about key scenes on others.

And since you're getting the goods from people who aren't just trying to make a buck -- in fact, they put in untold hours for free just out of their love for the movies -- you find yourself energized by the sheer enthusiasm that radiates off the pages. Web Review spent a few hours visiting some of the film sites whose creators have not just energy, but creativity and Web savvy as well.

Perhaps the most impressive fan site we found was Jason Ruspini's unofficial Star Wars Home Page. Jason, a student at the University of Pennsylvania, keeps his site up-to-date with daily maintenance, saving major overhauls for his "vacation." His pages, a true multimedia extravaganza, feature everything from graphics to soundfiles to MPEG clips to game demos.

Jason's extensive site has won him an international audience, and he's had about three million connections in his first year online. Asked why movie studios' pages tend to be so much less interesting, Jason replies: "Studios' pages are advertisements. Fan pages are necessarily better because they're made by fans for fans. It's not really in a studio's interest to distribute multimedia files, obscure FAQs, humor files, etc. This is the stuff people like the most."

Mark Meloon's findings seem to bear this out. The CalTech student -- who maintains an array of Web pages about everything from his mom's pet chihuahua to the vocal stylings of William Shatner to information on women bodybuilders -- publishes access stats to see who's looking at what. The bodybuilders win, hands down, getting over four times as many accesses as his Godzilla page the week I checked in.

Too bad, because the Godzilla page is definitely worth a visit. Even if you never gave the Japanese terror a second thought, chances are you'll find lots to entertain you at this graphics-heavy site. Photos of Godzilla battling his formidable foes -- and less formidable ones, like Barney -- are complemented by amusing writing and hilarious charts.

The secret to keeping a page interesting, Meloon believes, is breaking up the text. "While there is a lot of info on my G-page, it's really broken into sections and adorned with pictures. People go to the WWW to see neat stuff, they don't want to read a lot of small print, especially on a computer screen."

This is something the creator of the Reservoir Dogs page might want to consider before his next update. Norwegian Kenneth Aastrom's site has information you wouldn't find on a studio's page, like a FAQ, various theories on what happened to Mr. Pink, and the complete script of the movie. Unfortunately, all of the text is presented in that awful Courier font, making it even less appealing to read than normal screen text. While this is a gold mine for fans of Reservoir Dogs and Quentin Tarantino, casual Web surfers probably won't want to spend much time here.

The Alien page is likewise something of a special-interest site. Sure, the color pictures of aliens clinging to people's faces will appeal to a broad audience, but text files like the Alien parody and fun page are strictly for the connoisseur.

The page's creator, Eelko de Vos of the Netherlands, is not the sort of guy you'd expect to be spending a lot of time maintaining a dark-themed site. Clean-cut and on the counsel of his university's faculty, Eelko's the type of person who sprinkles his emails liberally with smileys and exclamation points. Nonetheless, he takes as much as 30 hours a week out of his wholesome life to bring together the text, graphics, and sound files on his Alien page -- and to reply to the email he gets from around the world.

His advice: "If you have information which people from all over the world probably wish to access, do not think lightly about the responsibility that comes with it. It takes a lot of your spare time... but it will sure give you a lot of nice contacts and stuff sent to you by snail mail!"

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