If you're ready to pay to view, YouTube provides the most comprehensive selection of brand-new films for anyone. The video streaming service also offers a large, if difficult to locate, collection of free movies that are legal to watch.

Really! And we're not talking about oddly uploaded, blurry, shaky movies. There are genuine, completely free (and good) movies available alongside popular online celebrities and adorable animal montages.

Along with a number of undiscovered gems from YouTube's official collection of free movies, this treasure trove also includes a wide range of masterpieces that are available for free because they have reached the public domain.

Here Are the Top 10 Best Free Movies on YouTube

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Steamboat Bill, Jr.

Year: 1928

Director: Buster Keaton and Charles Reisner
Stars: Buster Keaton, Ernest Torrence, Marion Byron
Genre: Silent, Action, Comedy
Runtime: 77 minutes

The climactic cyclone sequence in Steamboat Bill, Jr., which combines great action and great comedy, would be enough to establish the movie in the pantheon of revered classic silent movies. There are many great moments in the free-flowing, mind-blowing sequence, including the iconic shot of Keaton being struck by a house's facade.

However, Steamboat Bill, Jr. also highlights some of Keaton's wonderful intimacy as an actor, such as during a scene in which his father tries to find him a more manly hat or during an excruciatingly funny attempt to pantomime a jailbreak plan.

Sunrise

Year: 1927

Director: F.W. Murnau
Stars: Janet Gaynor, George O’Brien, Margaret Livingston
Genre: Silent, Romance, Thriller
Runtime: 110 minutes

The excitement in the final years of the 1920s was palpable as talented filmmakers pushed to realize the full potential of the medium. Sunrise was the result of that ambition, which saw Fox bring the brilliant German director F.W. Murnau to Hollywood, where he and his cameramen made some of the most breathtaking motion pictures ever captured on film.

Murnau's camera flies over country fields, becomes entangled in city life, and desperately looms over a lake in a storm as he tells the tale of a husband who wanders and then tries to right himself. At the same time, his actors, George O'Brien and Janet Gaynor exude sincerity.

The General

Year: 1926

Directors: Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckham
Stars: Joseph Keaton, Marion Mack, Glen Cavender
Genre: Silent, Comedy, Romance
Runtime: 79 minutes

A Southern railroad engineer (The Great Stone Face Buster Keaton) is forced to pursue his two loved ones across enemy lines after Yankee spies steal his locomotive and abduct his girlfriend. The General is arguably the best silent comedy ever made, if not the best comedy ever made, even though a few Charlie Chaplin films can compete.

The movie, which was released at the height of Buster Keaton's illustrious career, was not a critical or commercial success, but it has aged remarkably well. It's a story spectacle that seamlessly blends comedy, action (chases, fires, and explosions), romance, and adventure.

Safety Last

Year: 1923

Directors: Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor
Stars: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Bill Strother
Genre: Silent, Comedy, Adventure
Runtime: 80 minutes

Rodney Sauer of the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra told me after accompanying Safety Last at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, "I shouldn't have bothered scoring the last 15 minutes." During Harold Lloyd's famous building-scaling sequence, he and his ensemble couldn't even hear themselves over the uproarious laughter in the Castro Theatre.

The scene, with its famous clock-hanging finale, is such a perfect blend of suspense and comedy that it doesn't matter that the rest of the film appears to exist solely to set it up. This film has only recently entered the public domain.

Nosferatu

Year: 1929

Director: F. W. Murnau
Stars: Max Schreck, Alexander Granach, Gustav von Wangenheim
Genre: Silent, Horror
Runtime: 63 minutes

F.W. Murnau's sublimely odd riff on Dracula has been a fixture of the genre for so long that justifying its inclusion on this list seems pointless. The film was magnificent in its freakish, dour mood and visual eccentricities, and it invented much of modern vampire lore as we know it. It's the best kind of once-a-year viewing.

The Navigator

Year: 1924

Directors: Buster Keaton, Donald Crisp
Stars: Buster Keaton, Kathryn McGuire, Fred Vroom
Genre: Silent, Comedy
Runtime: 63 minutes

The Navigator mines an ocean liner for every conceivable gag. Keaton plays a clueless rich young man who is stranded on a giant, adrift ship with only the clueless rich young woman who rejected him for company. These two spoiled upper-class twerps can't even open a can of food, let alone operate a ship, and must improvise in hilarious ways to keep things under control.

The scene in which the two characters each suspect someone else is on the boat but can't find anyone else is classic Keaton, with perfectly timed wide shots that make it more believable that the two keep missing each other. The best scene may be on a spooky night when the characters allow themselves to be creeped out. The best moment may be a spooky night when the characters let the creepiness of the boat get the best of them.

The Scarecrow

Year: 1920

Director: Buster Keaton, Eddie Cline
Stars: Buster Keaton, Joe Roberts, Joe Keaton
Genre: Silent, Comedy
Runtime: 21 minutes

There are Buster Keaton two-reelers with more ambitious special effects, epic stunts, and elaborate chase scenes, but none get as many laughs as The Scarecrow. The film never takes a breather as it moves from location to location, always setting up and paying off new laughs.

The best moments include an ingenious one-room house, an appearance by the great Luke the Dog, and some truly divine banter between Keaton, Joe Roberts, and Keaton's father, Joe.

Blackmail

Year: 1929
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Stars: Anny Ondra, John Longden, Donald Calthrop
Genre: Thriller
Runtime: 86 minutes

Alfred Hitchcock's first sound film, Blackmail, was also his final silent film, as it was made in both formats. While the sound version is remembered for Hitchcock's new technology experiments (notably a scene emphasizing the word "knife"), the silent version flows much more smoothly.

And Donald Calthrop's portrayal of the blackmailer is even creepier, with only his face and body language doing the trick.

The Kid

Year: 1921
Director: Charlie Chaplin
Stars: Charlie Chaplin, Jackie Coogan, Edna Purviance
Genre: Silent, Comedy
Runtime: 60 minutes

The Kid, Charlie Chaplin's first full-length film and one of his best, tells the story of an abandoned child and the life he builds with The Little Tramp. Chaplin overcame strong studio opposition to make a more serious film than his previous work.

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The Kid, on the other hand, contains just as much slapstick humor as his previous shorts, but in a larger, more dramatic context.

Train to Busan

Year: 2016
Director: Yeon Sang-ho
Stars: Gong Yoo, Ma Dong-seok, Jung Yu-mi, Kim Su-an, Kim Eui-sung, Choi Woo-shik, Ahn So-hee
Runtime: 118 minutes

Whether you like them or despise them, zombies are still a staple of the horror genre in 2016, reliable enough to set your conductor's watch by. And, while I've probably seen enough indie zombie films to make me avoid them for the rest of my life, there is usually at least one great zombie movie every other year.

There's no need to speculate: the train to Busan would have undoubtedly made the cut. This South Korean story about a career-minded father trying to protect his young daughter on a train full of rampaging zombies is equal parts suspenseful popcorn entertainment and genuine family drama.

It concludes with several action elements that I've never seen or considered for a zombie film, and any time you can add something truly novel to the zombie genre, you're doing something right. With a few memorable, empathetic supporting characters and some outstanding makeup effects, you have one of the best zombie movies of the last decade.

WATCH ON YOUTUBE

Top 10 Best Movies on YouTube [Free Streaming]