The 39 steps – in one step

Friday I gave myself a treat and checked out the new comedy stage adaptation of Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps. For all the peeps in London: go and see it, it is well worth the money and seeing 4 actors play about 12 roles switching costumes, props and accents at a terrible speed was something I hadn’t seen before. The creativity of using very limited means to give the impression of a large range of sets (indoors and outdoors) was a joy to see and reminded me a lot of the stuff we have to go through daily to make things work on the web.

Coming home I wanted to see the movie again, and ordered a copy of the DVD second-hand on amazon (after having struck out at all the small DVD stores in Soho – yes the ones that cover the basement porn shop with old DVDs and books on the upper floor). Right after I ordered the DVD I remembered though that I could have saved myself the hassle, as movies as old as The 39 Steps (1935) are very likely to be available online for free. Of course there will be illegal torrents of DVD rips, but you can get old black and white classics legally at Archive.org, too. Here’s a short list of what you can download in various formats (ogg, Mpeg, Mpeg2, divx):

• The 39 Steps
• The Man who knew too much
• M – Eine Stadt sucht einen Moerder (THE classic)
• The Phantom Ship
• The Power of Nightmares (Amazing documentary comparing fundamentalism in the Middle East and Neoconservatism in the US)
• Reefer Madness
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde