Top 40 best free legal movies you can download right now

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Sean P. Aune at tech.blorge has put together a great list of movies on archive.org.  From his blog:

The Internet Archive works to bring together anything and everything that resides in the public domain, and that includes movies.  We’ve gathered together 40 of the best ones that will keep you entertained for hours on end, all without costing you a dime outside of using some of your bandwidth.  Enjoy!

I haven’t seen a lot of these and didn’t even know we had some of them. This is a great list. Gotta watch one of the Hitchcock movies right now.

Sean, thanks for doing the heavy lifting!

-Jeff Kaplan

70 thoughts on “Top 40 best free legal movies you can download right now”

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  10. Tom Gigante

    I have been trying to send an e-mail to you for (2) days and for some reason or other your system fails to accept it; can you e-mail me with information as to how I can get to you? I’ve also tried the telephone but whoever answers the phone says that I need to e-mail you; I’ve tried “info@archives.org” but that doesn’t work. Please advise me. Thanks. Tom Gigante.

  12. Fred Philpott

    No. 41 – “Things To C0me” directed by Alexander Korda. Made about 1936.

    It starts off a bit slowly but look for the flat screen TV in one of the scenes.

    1. Joe

      Things To C0me is one of my favorite movies of all time a true classic if you like that one Fred look for a movie called Metropolis(1927)

      1. Kent

        Joe,

        Metropolis is a great film. Unfortunately (and a lot of people don’t know this) but it is not currently in the public domain. Any and all copies have active copyrights, although some people occasionally upload them not knowing that. That film and a number of others actually had their copyrights restored by U.S. treaty about 20 years ago.

        More on that here (worth reading):

        http://www.publicdomainsherpa.com/copyright-restoration.html

        Kino Films has a recently restored version with newly discovered footage – read about it here:

        http://www.metropolis1927.com

        Also, the Alloy Orchestra (a live orchestra that performs music for the silent films), did a great score for Metropolis and offers it on CD. You can listen to it as you watch the film:

        http://www.alloyorchestra.com

  13. angry pelican

    The list is a great place to start but there are a plethora of interesting little films so don’t stop when you have seen the forty. I just watched a charming, little and hopeful film called Keeper of the Bees which was really kind of exceptional in a quiet sort of way.

  14. Vikas Bansode

    Outstanding Website I ever found on the Net, while Iwas finding speeches of the great personlities from google, I got this website. for I always search our website download something from it. Most important thing about this, It gives unlimited downding free any where, I downloads it while on job there where I don’t have full authorities to Access the Internet, yet I can access this website
    Thank You very Much to creating this website

  15. Rafael Nieves

    The list is a great website to start there are many interesting films. Don’t stop when you have seen at lead 20 of them

  20. Me

    Ya know, when we “go” to the above-said List – Manny Farber isn’t listening, is he? – when we go to the List at … http://tech.blorge.com/ … we are no longer on a “*.org” page.

    So biggie?

    Well, institutions etc. won’t allow anything but a “*.org” (so we can’t see the list).

    Any way for the rest of us to see the “secret” List?

  23. web page designer

    Agreed: “Sean, thanks for doing the heavy lifting!”

    And, “thank YOU!” Jeff for doing the reminder posting here, else I’d have NEVER learned about these 40 oldies!

    Awesome… thanks again,
    Trish

  29. Nandan

    Well I’ve to confess though a Movie-buff. I haven’t heard some names mentioned in ur list. Thanks for this link, simply amazing..

  31. Skeen45

    The Brother From Another Planet is no longer available according to the website

  32. Halla Cooke

    This website (Top 40 best free legal movies you can download right now | Internet Archive Blogs) does not display correctly on my android – you might want to try and fix that 🙂 Halla Cooke

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  36. Harry

    Very sad. “Brother From Another Planet” is a very good movie which I saw quite a few years ago. Wanted to watch it again and was saddened when it wasn’t available. I’ll keep coming back hoping it will be cleared for showing. Thanks for the list. I’m a great fan of Internet Archives and do a lot of watching the old flicks. Many I had seen on Saturday afternoon matinees as a kid back in the late forties and fifties. Great memories of old favorites. Thanks.

  45. Sanjay Kumar

    Any idea about an establishment these movies could be resourced for a cost or otherwise?

  46. Michael G. Lewis

    The website presents, free, a system of equations for the Hubble Red Shift. It’s not entertaining though world reaction to it is. When I vowed in 1957 to find it, I did not know it would take 25 years. In preparation in 1982 I promised (to keep my vision clean) not to ask for money to present it to the world. The equation came in a wonderful gedanken-experiment. It was 2000 before I got it onto the internet. For ten years it was at one ISP, then I switched to another. There have been upwards of 50,000 visitors, many of which are in important national offices of many kinds. It’s available for the Internet Archives if IA wants that sort of thing. Am especially writing to fend the free publication of it since I recently became vulnerable to a publisher who wants the copyrights for profit. After understanding the equations, the red shift phenomenon is a subjective perception of light of all sources – daylight, candles, fireflies, glowsticks, etc. Michael Grant Lewis

  47. Richard George Flatley Jr.

    Thank You Michael Lewis for your insite and determinations to see this project of yours to move forward. I have not as of yet download these important gov. movies. If any of these movie at one time or another was of a classified nature, I believe with the moving of world monopolies your films will be buried. Hopefully you will find some secure site to protect them.

  49. Mantrax

    Thanks for hard work but why this limitation of very small and pixelated movies ? Some may be discouraged from discovering jewels because of that. Me first, I quit and get back to clean ones I prefer to pay. There may be 500 classics I may want to see before getting into the pixelated soup.

  51. Henry

    The link to tech.blorge.com… seems to be associated with some malware. According to my AVG, a threat was posted and removed as soon as I clicked on the link to it on this page, 9/18/12.

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  56. Chantay Safa

    Right here is the right web site for anybody who would like to find out about this topic. You understand so much its almost hard to argue with you (not that I really would want to…HaHa). You definitely put a brand new spin on a topic which has been discussed for ages. Great stuff, just great!|

    1. kristi

      wait… are you actually insulting the person that posted this years old post? It’s a list of movies that are posted here… I don’t see how that is bad of laughable…

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  59. kristi

    Nice list. The site it’s self is a bit of a disapointment though. Was hopefull that it was be like early lifehacker or something but it’s just another tabloid like techblog yelling about how this or that company is evil.

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