Beyond streaming platforms, you can watch free movies on the Internet without paying a subscription. And in a totally legal way, without breaking any rule and being able to enjoy great classics at home. You can watch movies for free on YouTube, you don’t need to pay anything or subscribe to YouTube Premium.
Although we continue to go to the cinema, it is increasingly common for the cinema to be mounted in the living room. Televisions are getting better and better with internet connection and improving the sound of the Smart TV is very simple for us to fully immerse ourselves in the movie that we are going to see. One of the most recommended and popular options is to use streaming video services such as Netflix or HBO, but it is not the only one and we can watch free movies on YouTube if we do not have any other contracted service. Also check 9 best movies sites to watch online for free.
Movies on YouTube?
Let’s go by parts… Can you watch free movies online doing it legally? Yes. There is a large collection of old titles that are in the public domain, that is, they are no longer protected by copyright and can be exhibited in public without paying the fee for their commercial use. And that allows you to watch free movies on YouTube, great classics of all time. The date on which a film becomes public domain varies by country but practically all works range from 50 years from the death of its author to 80 years after the death of its author.
But beyond films from the 1940s or 1950s, some production companies voluntarily decide to upload their own feature films available to viewers at no cost to their YouTube channel. There are many channels dedicated to uploading films in a totally legal way, without breaking the law… Either because they are films without copyright or because the production companies themselves are in charge of enriching their channel, such as that of the Cinetel production company with hundreds of films, cartoons and online documentaries available to any user of the platform.
Free cinema
Cinetel multimedia has one of the best channels to watch free movies on YouTube in a totally legal way and some not too old. Cinetel is a Spanish production company with a wide film catalog with thousands of titles thanks to the rights of many American content providers. And Cinetel offers many free movies on YouTube, complete and in one video. You can see, for example, The Battleship Potemkin or A Star Is Born, by Janet Gaynor and Fredric March. It has a wide catalog of videos that you can access from YouTube.
Classic Spanish Cinema: This channel (or collaborative playlist, rather) has more than a thousand classic Spanish films, including Joselito and many other classics. The quality is not the best and logically you will not see the titles in 4K but you can enjoy it if you like national titles or if you want your grandparents or parents to enjoy them with you.
Cinema in Castilian is another similar playlist in which you can find some movies in Spanish to watch for free on YouTube with more than a thousand different videos that you can choose from even if you don’t expect to find the latest movie releases.
Thanks to the Legally Free website, we will be able to see complete and free movies on YouTube, all of them in Spanish. They all come with their file where we can see a summary of the film, the actors who participate, the director, curiosities about the shooting and some other information that may be of interest to us to decide if we want to see it or not.
Foreign films
If you don’t care about the language, just search for Public Domain Full Movies and you will find the great classics of all time. The Public Domain Full Movies channel allows you to watch Charlie Chaplin, the Wizard of Oz, Nosferatu… The 20th century film classics that are available to watch for free on YouTube like Cyrano de Bergerac, for example. It is totally free and you can activate subtitles.
Also in English you can find the YouTube Full-Length Classic Movies playlist with more than 200 available titles and great film classics of all themes. Some may be blocked depending on the country you are accessing from but there are many available free of charge that you can see in full in a single video.
We can enjoy horror movies thanks to the 80shorror.net channel, where we have more than 400 films of this genre from the 80s. For all lovers of these movies this will be an ideal place.
Another good channel is Western Manía, where we can enjoy classic-style movies. It has a good number of films and the occasional series that could also be interesting to us.
In Film Classics we are going to enjoy more than 3,000 films from the classic cinema of the United States, many of them from the so-called golden age of Hollywood, where we will see some of the best actors and actresses of all time, in addition to enjoying directors like Alfred Hitchcock among others.
Rent on YouTube
An alternative option to watching free movies on YouTube is to rent them. It is not the same, of course, because you will have to pay. But the advantage is that the cost is very low, just a couple of euros, and you can see newer and modern titles or view them from any device. From the MOVIES section of YouTube you can find a huge list of movies that you can rent, from children’s themes to science fiction, horror, adults, documentaries…
It allows you two types of quality options, HD or SD, and you can rent it for very few euros. Once you have rented a movie, you will have four weeks to decide when to watch it and a maximum of 48 hours from when you start it. In those 48 hours you will be able to watch the movies as many times as you want and the great advantage is that not only are they titles like the ones you can see for free on YouTube, but we also find news on any subject. In general, the rental price is usually three or four euros so it will be much more affordable than going to the movies.
Other options
It is not the only place where you can see free high-quality movies, great classics of all kinds and thousands of different options: science fiction, comedy, horror, film noir… The Archive.org website not only includes a large collection of MS-DOS games to play for free but it offers thousands of movies that you can watch online at no cost. From the website itself you can start streaming thanks to the built-in player, you just have to wait for it to load completely so that it does not cut as the scenes progress. Or just hit play if you have a good internet connection.
In addition, the great advantage of Internet Archive is that you can not only watch the film online but you can download it in different formats if you need to take it to another device, such as from your computer to your Smart TV. Of course, the only drawback that you will find is that most of the films (or all, practically) are in English. The advantage is that you can download them if you need to incorporate subtitles that you can probably find effortlessly on the Internet. Once you know how it works, there are thousands of titles available and you can filter by year, by type, and even by directors or “creators” of the movie.