in reply to XML::RSS choking on the webserver

My first guess would be that your webserver has no permissions to open the file. See also the idiots guide to perl/CGI problems.

Evidentally its not liking the parsefile
Evidently you also get some error message. It might help to tell us what it is :-)

-- Joost downtime n. The period during which a system is error-free and immune from user input.