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I do love a good movie …

…and I really love bad movies. I look forward to those awful movies on the Sci-Fi channel. You remember that movie where the Octopus attacks New York? How about Mansquito? Frankenfish? Man-Thing? Snakehead Terror? Deadly Swarm? Curse of the Komodo? I loved every single one of ‘em.

Ahhhh …. there’s no finer entertainment than Sci Fi on the weekends.

Except public domain movies, which can often be found online and available for download. Oh yea, and they’re often really, really bad.

For a B movie buff like me, that makes them really, really sweet.

So, what are public domain movies, you ask?

Generally speaking, public domain movies are those on which the copyright has expired, or the owner/creator has donated the movie to the benefit of the public and the detriment of himself and his heirs. There is a good explanation of the US Public Domain rules at http://www.openflix.com/information/US-copyright.php. You should remember that although one version of a movie may be public domain, another version might be copyright protected. I don’t pretend to be an expert on this … do your own research if you have a question about a particular movie.

Some of my favorite movies are available as public domain … Metropolis, Nosferatu, and Phantom of the Opera, to name a few. I will be making these movies available for download from this site as soon as I have the files ready. Public domain quality isn’t great, but it’s good enough for you to decide if you want to spend $20-$30 on the digitally restored, copyright protected versions. These movies are definitely worth watching, and since they’re public domain, you’ve no excuse to not give them a try.

You can find a bevy load of public domain files at the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/). They have many feature films in different formats. The smallest file size is usually the mp4 file type. You may need Quicktime to play this type of file. You can get large, high quality files there, too, if you’d like to burn a VCD or DVD. Those of you who like old cartoons will find the Internet Archive to be like Heaven.

Enjoy!