Every time I visit The Internet Archive, I’m overwhelmed by the sheer number of options. I could spend hours searching the database for something worth my time, something that fits the mood of the moment. One day I might want classic Windows and Dos games, and another I might want to watch some weird Soviet cartoon I don’t understand. Something we can all appreciate is classic cinema. The way they used to make films was a lot more akin to a theatre production with studios and stages with hand-made special effects. The older the film, the more rudimentary the technology and technique. When we trace back storylines and character development, we can see themes and similarities that still prevail today.  
 
When we want to examine the depth of the human imagination and film industry inventiveness, turning to fantasy and sci-fi is probably going to yield a good harvest. The boat is pushed with each fantastical idea, the methods of getting the shot, the costumes and the effects, we can enjoy the production for what it is for its own place in time. So, we love to complain about the modern film with its CGI and AI generated what nots. So why not submerge your cultural imagination in something from a time when computers were counting machines.  
 
To save you time and effort, I’ve created this list of some top watch-worthy films from the Science Fiction and Fantasy genre that are completely free and downloadable on The Internet Archive. You can watch the online from the website or select the video file for download and take it with you. There are plenty of others on the site for you to browse if you have time. These selected ones are the titles that have stood out as unusual and entertaining.  
 
Fantastic Planet by Rene Laloux 1973 
 
The Revenge of a Kinematograph Cameraman (silent) by Wladyslaw Starewicz 1912 
 
Lady Frankenstein by Umberto Borsato 1970 
 
Satan’s Cheerleaders by Greydon Clark 1977 
 
Inner Sanctum by Lew Landers 1948 
 
House On Haunted Hill by William Castle 1959 
 
Day The Earth Stood Still starring Micheal Rennie (colourised) 1951 
 
Spellbound by Alfred Hitchcock 1945 
 
Gulliver’s Travels (animation) by Fleischer Studios 1939 
 
Kagemusha by Akira Kurosawa 1980 
 
Earth Vs The Flying Saucers by Sam Katzman (colourised) 1956 
 
Cosmos War Of The Planets by Louis Alex 1977  
 
 The Lost World by Jamie White 1925 
 
Creature From The Black Lagoon starring Richard Carlson (colourised) 1954 
 
Tarantula starring John Agar (colourised) 1955 
 
Horror Express with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing 1973 
 
Bloody Pit Of Horror by Francesco Merli and Ralph Zucker 1965 
 
Killers From Space by W. D. Wilder 1954 
 
Daughters Of Darkness by Harry Kumel 1971 

Grave Of The Vampire by John Hayes 1974 
 
Nosferatu 1922 
 
Waxworks by Conrad Veidt 1929 
 
Invasion Of The Body Snatchers by Walter Wanger (colourised) 1956 
 
The Deadly Mantis starring Craig Stevens (colourised) 1957 
 
It Came From Outer Space Starring Richard Carlson and Barbara Rush (colourised) 1953 
 
Kronos by Jeff Morrow (colourised) 1957 
 
Destroy All Planets by Masaichi Nagata 1968 
 
The Golem starring Paul Wegener 1920 
 
The Crawling Eye starring Forrest Tucker (colourised) 1958 
 
Silent Night, Bloody Night by Theodore Gershuny 1972 
 
Alice In Wonderland by W.W. Young (silent) 1915 
 
 The Monster That Challenged The World starring Tim Holt (colourised) 1957 
 
First Spaceship On Venus by Hans Mahlich 1960 
 
Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter by Brian Clemens 1974 
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In The Year 2889 by Larry Buchanan 1967 
 
When Worlds Collide by Rudolph Mate and George Pal 1951 
 
The Yesterday Machine 1963 
 
Haxan (silent) 1922  
 
Attack From Space Koreyoshi Akasaka 1969 
 
Nightmare Castle by Carlo Caiano 1965 
 
Beat The Devil starring Humphrey Bogart 1953 
 
Revenge Of The Creature From The Black Lagoon by Jack Arnold 1955 
 
Driller Killer uncut by Abel Ferrara 1979 
 
The Terror by Roger Corman 1963 
 
City Of The Dead / Horror Hotel by Ben Arbeid 1960 
 
Curse Of The Demon starring Dana Andrews (colourised) 1957 
 
White Zombie by Edward Halperin 1932 
 
Utopia by Raymond Egar 1951 
 
I Eat Your Skin by Del Tenney 1971 
Attack Of The Monsters by Masaichi Nagata 1968 
 
The Monolith Monsters 1957 
 
Evil Brain From Outer Space starring Ken Utsui 1964 
 
The Creature Walks Among Us by John Sherwood 1956 
 
So, there are plenty of titles here for you to enjoy, and it’s just a select pick from the massive list on the archive. I’ve done my best to ignore things that are well-known or not on theme. Here are some fun and creepy, sometimes fascinating, films to download, play, put on over parties with the volume down, or whatever you want. Have fun. PS. The Internet Archive is a crowd funded resource much like Alterative Fruit. Once you’ve tipped this journal, make sure to give them a little something too.  
 
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Is it a dying art? Taking individual frames of still images and applying tiny movements to give the illusion of animation. It is a cross-over between film and photography. With CGI having reached a level of decency that means producers can recreate pretty much anything they like to near-to-life detail, the time and effort needed to make stop motion pictures is simply commercially unviable. It requires more than profit for motivation when making art outside of the sales funnel.  
 
Set in a science-fiction fantasy city high above the ground, the residents of Chronopolis have reached immortality. Their lives become repetitive and boring, so they start doing strange experiments with time and space. By utilising ever more bizarre and inventive methods, the immortals extend their knowledge further than before. Are they searching for something at the end of the journey?  
 
His first full-length film, director Piotr Kamler received a grant of under $400,000 to make the animation in 1977. Upon completion in 1982, the first cut was over an hour long. It received many accolades, including Best Children’s Film at the Fantafestival 1982 plus received a showing at Cannes 82, possibly the biggest film festival in the world. With music scored by the highly sought-after Luc Ferrari, and original narration by Michael Lonsdale, the film had everything the audience wanted for a far-out and thoughtful adventure.  
 
Covered in metaphors and from the perspective of a Soviet Union Poland, the themes of labour, repetition, non-individuality, and uniformity run through the film. The experiments and inventiveness come in the form of new shapes and unusual designs that do not conform to the aesthetic of the background. Perhaps a sign of the mindset within this political and social landscape, willing the people to look beyond the normal to make the world a little more interesting.   
 
Upon re-release in 1988, the film had received an edit from the production company. The new version had the narration removed, highlighting the music and providing a silent dramatic experience. Possibly this made the film more universal and approachable to those of all ages and from all nations. A few extended scenes were also cut, leaving viewers in no doubt as to the flow of the story. YouTube has this version plus a short video of deleted scenes for you to enjoy. Perhaps a version from the Cannes Festival 1982 will resurface one day so we can enjoy the original director’s cut too.  

You can learn all kinds of animation skills online for free with FutureLearn. Paid options support this journal, too.

From the early days of still photography and all the camera tricks that inventive people sought to employ, the onset of film and moving pictures gave rise to another level of creativity. A whole new dimension of media was outlaid before our very eyes with clever use of illusion and exposure giving rise to a whole new world of visual experience. Realising the full potential of the format required exceptional minds who could imagine the process as a series of tools that can be used to bring joy and information to people all over the world.
 
We’ve all probably seen the film clip of a human face made to look like the moon with a rocket in one of its eyes. A black and white silent production, the iconic image sems to stick around even to this day. That film is just one of hundreds made by the French film pioneer Georges Méliès. Because of the ground-breaking and classic nature of this cult film producer, the works are lovingly kept alive across various platforms. The two online go-to places are YouTube and the Internet Archive. Both of these repositories contain a large collection of major and lesser-known examples.
 
The actor and film producer was born in France, Paris, where he lived until he died in 1938 aged 76. During his life as a performer Georges Méliès was able to manifest a lively and dynamic imaginary universe in which ghouls and ghosts danced alongside mad scientists and maidens. A jagged and off-centre style kept audiences on their toes as the imagery and concepts leapt from one tangent to another across his run of highly entertaining creations. 
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​Having learned how to manipulate puppets as a boy and discovered a thrill in the art of entertaining others, Georges began to learn magic when he witnessed tricks by two prominent British illusionists, John Maskelyne, the inventor of the pay toilet, and David Devant, famous for his magic kettle. When he came of age and inherited some money from his father’s side, Méliès invested his capital in a small magic show theatre previously owned by his long-term mentor Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin. Soon after this acquisition, he was able to witness one of the world’s first displays of the Lumière brothers’ cinematograph. This immediately struck him as a novel and potential world-changing method of demonstrating his genre of entertainment.
 
Using his theatre and his knowledge of performance art and illusion, Georges Méliès applied himself completely to the manufacturing of short and entertaining films. He soon found success with this venture, as it became a perfect extension of what he was already well-known for in Paris. His experience as an assistant for Robert-Houdin and then his following chairing of the theatre had provided him with a local fame and respect that could be immediately applied to his new media style. With the proceeds of his filmmaking, Georges Méliès again invested his capital in an expensive yet fully furnished film studio at his grounds just outside the city of Paris. A risky yet fortunately wise investment, the quality of the productions increased by an order of magnitude. It was at this new studio that many of his ground-breaking and genre defining works were made.
 
A completely glass-made building, with natural light making up a large feature of the studio, the venue played host to the making of all his films until the end of his career. Sadly, for Georges Méliès, he did not survive his risk-taking personality forever. His career fizzled out with an accumulation of debts and unmanageable overheads. The one-of-a-kind glass house film studio was demolished just after the end of the Second World War, not long after its illustrious occupant had deceased. Let this be a lesson to all of those who enjoy the arts, look after your artists, and ensure they can live a happy life. After-all, they’ve given one to you. Never-the-less, his amazing collection of creative genius is available to all via the magic of the modern-day internet. Let’s hope they stay relevant for another one hundred years or more.

​Visit the Georges Méliès Section in the Internet Archive 

And view this Curated YouTube Playlist
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A kindred spirit? Why not get to know him better with this beautiful illustrated paperback

​The public imagination is shaped by the experiences we each have throughout our lives. The things passed on from parent to child, the things taught in our schools, the stories we share, they all contribute to the way we think about the world and the way we perceive each other. When cinema was created, a new kind of storytelling entered the cultural sphere. For the first time a repeated story identical in every way could be broadcast to the world at large. Silent films were even accessible no matter what language you usually spoke. Although outdated and often no longer exciting, the art of vintage cinema is as fascinating as it always was and now, we can study it for its pivotal moment in history.
 
What began in 1983 is now a huge vault of classic films made in the golden age of moving pictures. Because of the nature of these old devices, the media is not completely reliable and with diminishing numbers of copies on old-fashioned tape, and fewer people knowing what to do with it, converting the contents into something more modern and durable seemed to be a true noble cause. The Prelinger Archive now holds over 30000 individual films, of which 9200 are available immediately online. Why not help the preservation effort by creating an archive of your own?
 
A massive selection obviously means a huge scope of content types. You will find the things you might expect, entertainment and information videos, but there are also home recordings and public government broadcasts. The amount of social and historical evidence on offer with these recordings is invaluable, with excerpts from history and social settings made permanent for us and our ancestors. We can explore the evolution of film making and the challenges of making acceptable content for mass audiences.
 
The videos are available to watch partly on the Internet Archive and partly on their dedicated YouTube channel. It will take a good while to sift through the entire catalogue, so here are some examples to give you a taste of what you’ll find.