Currently, because all of my free time is being chewed up with the gutting and remodeling of my 1400 square foot basement, I have not yet subscribed to Warner Archive Instant (WAI). There is just no time to dive in right now and probably won’t be until the end of the year.

But unlike my friend and colleague Christian Toto, I see WAI as an extraordinarily good deal.

I’ve been a classic movie fan, literally, for 35 years now, and the thought of having a couple of hundred hard-to-find titles from the golden age of Warner Bros. at my fingertips, makes me giddy. And one of the biggest draws is that many of these titles are brand new to me. As much as I love Turner Classic Movies and my own DVD collection, those are movies I have already seen — in some cases, many times.

Think about it: Just like their splendid DVD service, Warner Archive Instant will offer you a month’s worth of access to over 200 undiscovered treasures, but for about half the price of a DVD. Heck, I’d pay $10 per piece just to watch at half the titles on this page.  

Cagney in “The Mayor of Hell?” Bogart in “Black Legion?” *swoon*

And I know my wife will dig into the television section offering hard to find shows like “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” and the series that made The Mighty Robert Conrad a star, “Hawaiian Eye.”

Another plus is that unlike the dishonest racket that is cable television, WAI is a month-to-month service. This means that after you’ve seen everything you want to see, you can cancel (though a continuous stream of new titles has been promised). In fact, since the launch of WAI, I have been giving serious thought to purchasing it during a month where I would take a week’s vacation devoted to the service.

But I probably won’t because that would feel too much like stealing.

But that is the beauty of WAI: you can use it any way you like.

Granted, unlike Netflix, WAI is not for everyone. But it is not meant to be, Instead, WAI is a specialty outlet aimed directly at fanatics like myself — and (to quote a Warners’ classic) “the stuff that dreams are made of.”

 

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC