If you are a fan of old sci-fi movies you should check out the ad-free Internet Archive.

I'm going to label this as my first "Life Hack" themed post, as I do think it is a Lifehack...at least for people with certain tastes in old media. I recently discovered that there's a website called "Internet Archive" that has (among many things) a fine selection of old science fiction movies from the 1950's era on it. I've used it to watch It Came from Beneath the Sea, The Deadly Mantis, and Tarantula. I plan on giving Creature from the Black Lagoon a watch soon. But it doesn't stop there.

I kind of miss old cartoons from when I was a kid, and I've found all of these on Internet Archive as well. Some of the titles are Space Ghost, Thundarr the Barbarian, Black Star, and Dungeons & Dragons. I might also give the Road Runner show a watch. Now, don't get me wrong. A lot of these things have aged poorly or they were just flat out bad. Sometimes though...it is kind of nice to ride the nostalgia train and see the truly weird science that was on display in much of the 1950's movies. Radiation fear was everywhere back then, and giant monsters seemed to be the norm. The effects look bad unless you want to see some old Harryhausen type special effects with stop motion clay work (which I think is pretty nice). But you can definitely see how Hollywood back then wanted/desired better and better effects. It was just unreachable with the kind of technology that they had at their fingertips.

If you watch a bunch of these 50's era sci-fi movies in a row, you also become aware of a formula that the writers used for these productions. It begins with some kind of opening montage to pave the way for the weird science. Then some kind of tragedy that draws the attention of the military who then goes to a scientist group that always consists of one man and one woman. The military is always stupefied as to what's going on, and the scientists have to unravel everything using their weird techniques. Then enters "the monster" and there is usually lots of death and destruction that eventually ends in the monster being killed. The last bit of the movie usually has some excuse to see the female lead in the movie getting together with the male lead while some big moral lesson about the "dangers of the unknown" is said before the credits roll.

It got me to thinking of how different storytelling in movies is today. In the time between then and now, people have discovered that you need to make each individual character shine so that the audience can feel invested in them. The monster then becomes kind of secondary, similar to how Alien handles things. I mean...the monster still gets top billing. But you go to these kinds of movies to watch people die to the monster. And in order to make that effective, you want people to be invested in that character so that you can experience the fear and heightened emotions associated with survival and pending demise. The 1950's movies didn't do this (at all) very well. The story (the whole story) was just "the monster."

Anyway, my "lifehack" for you then is to explore Internet Archive. It's free and has a huge movie database with no commercials, and the quality is actually as good as you'd get were these to air on TCM or something like that. You'll find all kinds of offerings from old cartoons to monster movies to old Sinbad movies...whatever it is that you might miss from that era (or if you are curious). I have a list I'm compiling on my phone, and that I plan to watch when I have the time.