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Fortean Culture Freebies

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WhistlingJack

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Oct 29, 2003
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I started this thread primarily to propagate the news that Horror Express, starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, has popped up over at archive.org, then thought I may as well begin a topic whereby we can post links to downloadable films, programmes and books of a Fortean theme (though no naughty torrents, please): here are the results of a quick perusal of the films over at archive.org, anyway: -

Frankenstein (1910)
The Terror (Roger Corman, 1963)
Attack of the Giant Leeches (Roger Corman, 1959)
Satanic Rites of Dracula, The (1974)
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936)
The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
The Wasp Woman (Roger Corman, 1960)
Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari ( The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari ) (1919/20)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)
Haxan (1922)
The Phantom Of The Opera (1929)
Horror Express (1973)
Deep Red (Profondo Rosso) (1975)
Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (A Symphony of Horror) (1922)
 
WhistlingJack said:
...

Haxan (1922)

...
Click to expand...
Great stuff! Some genuine classics! :)

I'd just like to point out that 'Häxan' is a very early, Fortean style, documentary on witchcraft hysteria and psychiatry through the Ages and well worth checking out. :yeay:
 
Damn, that's an amazing resource. I notice they also have Carnival of Souls - I find it a bit overrated myself, but it seems to have quite a following. It's a shame they don't have my two favourite Roger Corman flicks, though - The Viking Women and The Sea Serpent and The Undead.
 
WFMU has both sides of the 7" given away with copies of the book Breakthrough: An Amazing Experiment In Electronic Communication With The Dead (and later with The Unexplained) available for download.
 
This website has what I think is the entire series of Jon Ronson's 'For The Love Of' available to view or download.

If you've never heard of it, For The Love Of was a late night discussion program on Channel 4 (I think), which was chaired by Jon Ronson and featured a host of interesting characters, usually rather eccentric ones at that. While they weren't all on Fortean type subjects, there are episodes on things like ghosts, time travel and alien abduction.

I think the site is legit, I found the link via Jon Ronson's own forum so presumably it's all above board (though the website could do with sorting out some missing images). There's a couple of episodes you have to pay for, but most are free to watch/download. Each film is about an hour long and around 250 meg. If you download them, they are in a weird Quicktime format, but I've managed to view them on a pc using the free VLC player.

I can't quite remember when they are from though. I remember watching most of them, but I can't think of when exactly it was on. I'm leaning towards late 1990s. Anyone else recall?
 
Vladimir Bortko's 2005 mini-series adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov's bizzare masterpiece about the devil causing havoc in Stalin's Moscow'The Master and Margarita' is available in segments of 10 minutes or so on youtube.

It is well worth a look. No spoilers: just trust me. ;)

edited cause I am shite at links
 
Thank you WJ, I wasn't aware of archive.org.

Haxan has been on my 'must see' list for a while.

Brown!
 
Gould and Pyle's Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine is now available for perusal here.
 
Jon Ronson hosts a 50-minute discussion on time travel, with guests including Jenny Randles and people who claim to have achieved time travel.

http://for-the-love-of.wowtv.tv/episodes/time-travel

And:

http://for-the-love-of.wowtv.tv/episodes/ghosts
http://for-the-love-of.wowtv.tv/episode ... nspiracies
http://for-the-love-of.wowtv.tv/episode ... -abduction
http://for-the-love-of.wowtv.tv/episode ... nspiracies

(There's loads of great Jon Ronson stuff on here, though some of it is paid content - but $2 for 50 minutes is not bad going!)

:D

Main index of episodes: http://for-the-love-of.wowtv.tv/episodes
 
That first anecdote about the time slip in France is something I mentioned in my comic here.

Pretty difficult to summarise a complicated story like that in the space of one panel, but it's nice to know I didn't dream it up. My own time slip "experience" (in panel 4) is rather less dramatic, unfortunately.
 
usbycjthape said:
That first anecdote about the time slip in France is something I mentioned in my comic here.
Click to expand...

Now I'm pretty disappointed the Bigass Book of Seriously Weird Shit doesn't actually exist.
:( :D
 
Hmmm

ttaarraass said:
usbycjthape said:
That first anecdote about the time slip in France is something I mentioned in my comic here.
Click to expand...

Now I'm pretty disappointed the Bigass Book of Seriously Weird Shit doesn't actually exist.
:( :D
Click to expand...


It just occurred to me that it actually might exist, I mean nothing's surprising on the the internet, right? Unfortunately, googling that phrase only brings up predictable and er... questionable results. The good news is that it's a perfectly marketable idea for a spinoff publication for the boys at FT - maybe they could get it out in time for Christmas?
 
I watched a decent copy of the 'The Stone Tape' (1972), on YouTube, tonight.

Cut into chunks and all that, but well worth watching. One of the best and most Fortean adaptations of Nigel Kneale's work, after the Quatermass series. A sublime mixture of horror and science fiction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkEK17FdSMY

Catch it if you can. :yeay:
 
It was a few years since I had explored the world of online musical scores, having somewhat neglected music in favour of film since DVDs came along. Back around 2006, I felt quite chuffed to find half a dozen scores of little motets and choral pieces on a site called Petrucci.

What has happened to that site since is recorded on this page

I was brought up in the belief that to properly appreciate a piece of music, you needed to follow the score as you listened. The trouble was that new pocket-scores were often several times as expensive as the records! It was always a happy day if a stash of old scores or sheet-music found their way to a charity shop but those random lucky hits are history: the Petrucci Library is quite staggering in its coverage. Practically everything by every composer you have heard of and vast swathes of less celebrated figures is there for anyone with the initiative to click a button. I have even been tempted to print out some of the piano music and put my fingers to work on a bit of Albéniz, for the first time in years.

It does, however, give me pause for thought that this dream-resource has become available for free at a time when classical music culture has become more or less invisible to the uninitiated. It reminds me of a time when every town would have had a small store where livings were made by a small army of middle-men acting as gate-keepers to the wealth of musical culture. Not to mention those music teachers who would add a nice mark-up to anything they supplied to their pupils from their own stock of musty fodder. All gone! And it's tempting to say good riddance yet, browsing the seemingly endless stock of this Library of Babylon, I wonder how many of today's generation will ever find their way in!

Even if you wish only to boggle, the neat little url is here:

http://imslp.org/

8)

edit: "have had" not "have have!"
 
Oh Lordy! Amazing things are now available for free download. Students of early cinema should flock to:

http://mediahistoryproject.org/

Shelves and shelves of old cinema journals, often complete runs. Imagine what just one issue would cost to own. . . .

Now where's the devil to sell me twenty lifetimes in return for one badly-worn soul? :?
 
Beethoven's 5th Symphony must have had hundreds of recordings by now. For a long time, the Nikisch version from 1913 was regarded as the first of any complete symphony.

But it appears the Odeon company recorded it in Berlin in 1910 under its house conductor, Friedrich Kark.

Though the sound from over a century ago is not going to be hi-fi, there is no difficulty in following the score. The performance has some lapses but it is spirited enough.

It is available to hear free on YouTube:

Beethoven's 5th in 1910

To get the date in perspective, the symphony was first performed in 1808, we are hearing a performance from just 102 years later. A further 102 years have elapsed since it went onto those discs! :)

edit: missing "to" added in 3rd paragraph
 
Oh, nice find, ally_katte, thanks for posting!

Just thing thing for a damp Sunday afternoon; I'm watching a documentary on Escher now :D
 
When I'm bored with watching cats shagging on Youtube, I try something a tad more cultural on the French-based DailyMotion site.

Though they are meant for streaming and seem to be licenced by the owners, it is easy to save them - at least in Safari.

The BFI have uploaded a swathe of their own titles, including The Terence Davies Trilogy, Lotte Reiniger's silhouette animations, Jan Svankmajer's short films and Scorsese's Personal Journey Through American Movies complete:

http://www.dailymotion.com/user/BFIfilms/1

I get the feeling I have not even scratched the surface of this site. Canal + also seem to upload their films. I have just found L'enfer de Henri Georges Clouzot, the fascinating study of his unfinished final film, albeit without English subs:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xssa95 ... t_creation

The very kinky trailer for his earlier La Prisonniere is also to be seen.

Stacks of Georges Méliès shorts, including many I have not seen before. :)
 
If you have a means of downloading video from your browser cache, you'll find that both YouTube and Veoh stream in mp4 while DailyMotion still only offers flv.

Not that any of you would dream of doing anything with that information, of course... ;)
 
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