Check these classic movie sites - they're free

Only recently did I realise there were websites where, with a few clicks, you could watch some great old films and tv, and at no charge.

Here are a few that are worth looking at.

1. www. archive.org. This is the 'Internet Archive' site and is the best of those I've seen. By clicking on the relevant categories, you can find some real classics.

The Film Noir and Sci/Horror sections are particularly good. Shadow of a Doubt, Detour, House on Haunted Hill are there, also Mickey Rooney in Quicksand, plus many others. Some play in Windows Media Player (mpeg1 seemed to open this) or just click the arrow in the screen.

A long list of classic tv is there, including One Step Beyond and Quatermass 2 (original tv broadcasts).

2. emol.org/movies. This is the Entertainment Magazine online site. There are Crime/Mystery and Horror/Sci-Fi categories, with films including The Man Who Knew Too Much (Hitchcock's 1934 version) and Lang's Scarlet Street.

3. freemoviesonline.com. The Horror section includes Edgar Ulmer's Bluebeard, White Zombie and numerous others in various categories such as Drama, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi.

4. movieflix.com. Although plenty is on offer, you have to register to view and only a selection are free.

As you'd expect, the quality can be a bit dodgy. Sometimes the film wouldn't play, other times the picture would freeze or shake, but then they are free. As a novice to this, I don't know whether this down to the type of streaming or limitations of my system.

There are plenty of surprises. On the same site you have Ida Lupino's The Bigamist and The Stranger (Orson Welles) along with cheapo sci-fi flicks (freemovies).

So if your television, dvd or video player breaks down, just log in and watch.

1940s - The Great Age of Film-Making

The late 1930s to the early 1950s marks the most interesting period in British and American film-making. In particular, the move from standard genre (gangster, comedy, horrror) to a darker, more mature approach. This produced some of the finest moments in all cinema.

1939 has been described as the peak for Hollywood, but I would disagree. I see it as the end of the standard genre style. The Roaring Twenties is the swansong of the gangster film, but already James Cagney's sad downfall from big shot to taxi driver anticipates the emergence of film noir.

This darker style was assisted by European directors and writers coming to Hollywood as the Nazis influenced spread, and the world became engulfed in a second world war.

By 1949 and White Heat, Cagney's Cody Jarrett has become a more complex, isolated figure than previous hoodlums.

For me, the highlights as the forties progressed are The Maltese Falcon, Seventh Victim, Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Build My Gallows High (Out of the Past in the US), Odd Man Out, White Heat and The Third Man. Add to these the contributions of Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang and Robert Siodmak and you have a body of films that is unequalled.

TCM in UK and USA

Looking at the films to be shown at Halloween on TCM, it's clear that the viewers in the USA will be enjoying a much better time of it than those in the UK.

There are numerous gems for American viewers - Dead of Night, Curse of the Demon, some Val Lewton, Peter Lorre. The UK has none of these, but a few more recent offerings such as The Hunger (again).

First posting on filmnation-rollomart49

Much is made of the screen meetings of Humphrey Bogart with Lauren Bacall and Ingrid Bergman, but for me the outstanding meeting is between Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer in Build My Gallows High (aka Out of the Past), directed by Jacques Tourneur.
The opening scene between them is memorable, and the subesquent ones have a magnetic quality.

The other such scenes that come to mind are those between Fred McMurray and Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity.