When pirating became big, and people were watching movies illegally downloaded for free, the biggest rebuttal was “Get with the times. Who wants physical media anymore?” After some pushing and infrastructure, big studios were selling their movies online through iTunes and other smaller retailers (normally for full price).

But, then came the cheap streaming revolution, ushered in by Netflix and Hulu. Now, the big complaint became, how come we can’t see your stuff streaming for cheap? This ushered in tests of streaming rentals that could range from $0.99 to $14.99 based on newness and popularity. But, what of the old stuff?

Paramount has come to your rescue! This week, they opened up a free YouTube channel, The Paramount Vault, featuring somewhere around 100 classic and/or obscure films. The Vault is littered with obscurities ranging from the 316min cut of 1900 to Queer Duck: The Movie to William Castle’s final movie, Shanks.  In between those, Paramount is featuring a bunch of classic filler like Dark City, The Errand Boy and King Creole. And to round things out, they have thrown in a handful of indie films like Margot at the Wedding and The Chumscrubber.

Now, The Paramount Vault isn’t perfect. While I was watching The Sender through the app on my PS3, I received no commercial interruptions. However, while scanning a couple of the videos on my laptop, the timeline had the yellow markers for advertisements, and a short 90 minute movie had 7 of them (booo). This is about the ratio of commercials you get with free websites like IndieFlix.

Whoever is managing the channel hasn’t mastered the art of YouTube yet. Instead of using Channels, like any normal person, Paramount created play lists for their categories: comedy, drama, science fiction, thriller, horror, etc. This quirk is mainly weird and annoying, but it doesn’t seriously break the channel.

Paramount’s sizzle reel is hilarious because it features their hits like Airplane and Clueless, but those are currently nowhere to be found. The selection is bizarre and schizophrenic. You can find things like Shanks but also a weird old Steve Guttenberg film called The Man Who Wasn’t There, which apparently features Guttenberg shirtless for 10 minutes. You’ll have to wade through some crap to find the decent stuff.

Worst of all, you have to test the movies to find out if they’re in the correct aspect ratio. Many of the films look like they were scanned from a VHS source. So far, I have found 3 that were in the old 1.33:1 ratio – Shanks, The Man Who Wasn’t There and There Goes the Neighborhood – and two that were correct – The Sender and In Dreams. What makes that even stranger is that Shanks is currently on loan to Olive Films for distribution in a Widescreen presentation.

In addition to Paramount movies, they also have some Cannon films – Ninja III: The Domination, and the American Ninja series – and some Republic films – Bound. The whole channel is very strange, and I highly recommend checking it out.

Here are some titles you should watch, keeping in mind that I haven’t verified how they look nor their level of censorship.

1900 – A long and engaging Bernardo Bertolucci piece about Italy at the turn of the century, and the rise of fascism.

Ninja III: The Domination – It’s The Exorcist meets Gymkata. You can’t really go wrong.

Bound – The Wachowskis’ first movie is still a stunner.

In Dreams – (Aspect Ratio and quality verified) Visually Stunning and crabapple insane, this is a full season of American Horror Story crammed into a single movie (with all the positives and negatives that implies).

The Sender – (Aspect Ratio and quality verified) Released exactly between Altered States and Nightmare on Elm Street, this movie about dreams interfering with reality feels like a decent low-key Stephen King horror adaptation that never reaches the heights promised by either of its siblings.