Watch 99 Movies Free Online Courtesy of YouTube & MGM: Rocky, The Terminator, Four Weddings and a Funeral & More

We all have those major motion pic­tures we’re sure we’ll see one day, but some­how haven’t seen yet. Usu­al­ly they’ve had such a huge influ­ence on pop­u­lar cul­ture, inspir­ing decades of ref­er­ences, homages, and jokes, that we feel like we’ve seen them any­way. Back in the days of yore when tele­vi­sion reigned supreme, we might occa­sion­al­ly catch one of them (or most of one of them) while flip­ping chan­nels at night, albeit in a form re-edit­ed to remove sen­si­tive con­tent and fit the image onto a square screen. Giv­en how dra­mat­i­cal­ly those view­ing prac­tices have migrat­ed to the inter­net in the 21st cen­tu­ry, it only makes good sense that Youtube — that vast tem­ple of mod­ern-day chan­nel-flip­ping — would strike a deal with a Hol­ly­wood stu­dio to make more than a few of these movies avail­able, free to view.

Just this month, MGM put near­ly 100 of its films up on Youtube, some of the best known of which include The Ter­mi­na­tor, the Rocky and Pink Pan­ther movies, Legal­ly Blonde, Dirty Rot­ten Scoundrels, and Four Wed­dings and a Funer­al. Some of them you’ve almost cer­tain­ly seen (and quite pos­si­bly want to see again), and oth­ers you’ve been mean­ing to see for ten, twen­ty, thir­ty, maybe even forty years.

Just like on tele­vi­sion, the fact that you can watch them for free means that they come with ads, albeit ads less intru­sive than tra­di­tion­al com­mer­cial breaks — unless you pay the month­ly $9.99 USD for Youtube Pre­mi­um, in which case they’ll play ad-free. (And in any case, they’re avail­able at the moment only to view­ers in the Unit­ed States.) And also, as in the days of wee-hours chan­nel-surf­ing, you’ll find the acclaimed clas­sics mixed in with less­er-known pic­tures, even odd­i­ties, that may hold even more cin­e­mat­ic fas­ci­na­tion.

Some of the unex­pect­ed titles among MGM’s free movies on Youtube include doc­u­men­taries like Jiro Dreams of Sushi — the one about the most stern­ly and obses­sive­ly ded­i­cat­ed sushi chef in Tokyo, and prob­a­bly the world, you may remem­ber every­one talk­ing about a few years ago — and With Great Pow­er: The Stan Lee Sto­ry, post­ed no doubt in trib­ute to the recent­ly deceased com­ic book-indus­try leg­end. Cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly-inclined read­ers who remem­ber with amuse­ment the inter­net and our per­cep­tions of the inter­net back in the cable-TV days should take note that the free MGM col­lec­tion on Youtube Movies also includes Hack­ers, Hol­ly­wood’s most vivid depic­tion of the fear and opti­mism that swirled around com­put­ers and their con­nect­ed­ness in the mid-1990s. We had a fair few unre­al­is­tic expec­ta­tions of the inter­net back then, which that movie and movies like it now reveal, but how many of us dared imag­ine that it would take over the role of the tele­vi­sion?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,150 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

101 Free Silent Films: The Great Clas­sics

60 Free Film Noir Movies

New York­ers Can Now Stream 30,000 Free Movies, Includ­ing the Entire Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion, with Their Library Cards

10,000 Clas­sic Movie Posters Get­ting Dig­i­tized & Put Online by the Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter at UT-Austin: Free to Browse & Down­load

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.