Free Sci-Fi Movies — Watch Classic Science Fiction Online

Science fiction's public-domain corner is dominated by the atomic age, when Cold War anxiety about the bomb, the unknown, and what might be left of humanity met theater bookers who needed a double feature filled cheaply every week. Ed Wood's "Plan 9 from Outer Space" (1959) is the genre's most famous public-domain title for the wrong reasons — often called the worst film ever made, with paper-plate flying saucers, day flipping to night mid-scene, and a plot about aliens resurrecting the dead of a California cemetery — and it is, unrepentantly, a joy to watch. "The Last Man on Earth" (1964) plays the same anxieties completely straight: a plague has turned everyone into slow, sun-fearing undead, and one immune scientist spends his days burning bodies and his nights barricaded while they claw at the walls calling his name. It's the first screen adaptation of Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend", made decades before the vampire-plague premise became a horror standard, and Vincent Price's performance carries a threadbare Italian production a long way past its budget. Watch them back to back for the genre's two moods at once — earnest dread and gleeful ineptitude, made a few years apart on nearly the same amount of money.