What are we talking about here? The classics and excellent works of art dating from the 1930s or older available online.

Some of these works have inspired what we see on the silver screen today. An example is the science-fiction horror I Am Legend novel written in 1954 by Richard Matheson. So influential is this piece of literature that it has inspired three movies to date. The latest adaptation of the same name, starring Will Smith, caused a stir in the online community to find out more about the other works surrounding the classic novel.

The first movie adaptation in 1964 of the I Am Legend novel is titled Last Man on Earth while the second version in 1971 is titled The Omega Man with Charlton Heston in the lead, which is a cult-status movie itself. Heston thought that the novel would make a great movie when he read it on a plane, not knowing that it had been turned into a movie before, starring Vincent Price.

Well, if you are craving to see how a strong storyline, and not digital special effects, still makes a great movie, you can watch the first adaptation for free online! In some instances, with some know-how, you can download similar type of movies as well.

On YouTube, the movie is available in two parts, about 40 minutes each. Most public domain movie Web sites will link the viewer to a YouTube or similar online movie service due to the heavy logistics involved to host movies. The quality is OK, but some public domain movies do not share this trait as sources to convert them are hard to find. These rare movie versions have deteriorated and may probably be lost forever if nothing is done to digitise them.

Efforts to digitise such classics are important not only for the study of film history, but also for understanding the contemporary popular culture during a particular time in history. After all, who can deny the irreverant comedic genius of Monty Phyton’s Quest for the Holy Grail available from moviesfoundonline.com? The movies found in this database usually link to other sites, but the portal makes it easier to find the public domain movies available.

If you are adventurous enough, the Internet offers a wealth of opportunities to view other pieces of monumental film art. Those that have fallen into public domain can be found at Web sites such as www.openflix.com, www.publicdomaintorrents.com, emol.org/movies/ and www.archive.org.

In some instances, rights are given to aspiring movie-makers to “mesh up” movie clips by editing, copying or morphing them into new clips. This is relatively easy to perform with even the most humble movie editor built into Windows and Mac machines. Emol.org and archive.org are two examples of such sites.

Archive.org also has nearly 2,000 films from the Prelinger Archives, which was founded by Rick Prelinger in 1983 and grew into a collection of over 60,000 movies within 20 years.

Such flexibility in rights give ample opportunities to people to mesh up and try their hand in desktop movie-making.

Surely enough, if we all work together to put up more locally sourced pieces and release them on the public domain, we can inspire budding movie directors to start creating. Old movies, after all, inspire new ones in one way or another.