Who renewed the films everyone thinks are public domain?

Q: Who renewed the films everyone thinks are public domain?

Between 1984 and 1987 at least three parties renewed films whose original owners had stopped filing: Selma Enterprises took much of the American International library, Wade H. Williams III took late-fifties independent science fiction including Plan 9 from Outer Space, and Revival Pictures renewed House on Haunted Hill and Night of the Blood Beast. Those films are still carried as public domain by lists across the internet.

Three names account for most of the films in this section that turned out to be owned. They were not coincidences.

What happened

Under the 1909 Act a film had to be renewed in its twenty-eighth year or it fell into the public domain. A great many were not renewed, which is why so much fifties and sixties genre film is genuinely free, and why the lists exist at all.

What the lists missed is that between 1984 and 1987 several parties went back through those abandoned catalogs and filed. Not one or two titles. Libraries at a time, in order. The films they renewed are still carried as public domain almost everywhere, because the belief was formed before the filing and nothing went back to check.

The part that surprises people is that a film which had never been registered at all could be registered and renewed together, decades late, in one motion. That was legitimate under the 1909 Act. The Brain Eaters is the clean example: both filings entered on the same day in 1986, which is exactly why a search anchored on its 1958 release comes back empty and reads as abandonment.

The three, and what they took

Selma Enterprises

Worked through the American International library title by title across 1985 and 1986.

The Brain Eaters (1958): RE0000301078, registered 1986-04-30 — Registered and renewed on the same day, which is why a search anchored on 1958 comes back empty and reads as abandonment.
Teenage Cave Man (1958): RE0000286138, registered 1986-02-12
I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957): RE0000260915, registered 1985-10-15

Wade H. Williams III

Took the independent science fiction of the late fifties, including the most confidently mislabeled film on the internet.

Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957): RE0000279707, registered 1986-01-06 — Renewed twice on the same day. RE0000278774 is the second, identical in claimant and date, and either would be enough on its own.
The Astounding She-Monster (1957): RE0000270085, registered 1985-08-01 — This one carries two renewals seven months apart under DIFFERENT claimants: RE0000267205 on 7 January 1985 by Ronnie Ashcroft Productions, then this one. Whatever happened between those dates is not on the public record.

Revival Pictures

Renewed two horror pictures whose original owners had long since stopped filing.

House on Haunted Hill (1959): RE0000318809, registered 1986-01-12 — Filed as "House on a haunted hill", with an article the film itself does not have. That single word is almost certainly why the internet believes it is free.
Night of the Blood Beast (1958): RE0000318733, registered 1986-12-16

Why nobody finds these

The title in the catalog is not always the title on the poster, and an exact-title search for the wrong string returns nothing at all. Returning nothing is evidently what every list quoting these films has done.

Plan 9 from Outer Space is filed with the numeral spelled out, as Plan nine from outer space. House on Haunted Hill is filed as House on a haunted hill, with an article the film itself does not have. Two of the most famous free-to-watch horror titles in circulation are in copyright, and in both cases the only thing standing between the belief and the record is one word in a catalog entry.

The method that works is dull and reliable: search the renewal class on one distinctive word and read the entire result set, rather than trusting a title to match. Every finding on this page came out that way.

How to check this yourself

Everything above is drawn from public records. None of it requires our word:

The Catalog of Copyright Entries, the Copyright Office’s printed registration and renewal volumes, scanned and searchable at the Internet Archive and at the Online Books Page. Registration numbers beginning LP or MP are film entries.
The Copyright Office online records at copyright.gov, which are complete from 1978 and therefore decisive for any renewal that fell due from then on.
The NFPF Field Guide to Sponsored Films, for the industrial and educational titles, which records copyright status entry by entry.

What this does and does not mean

A renewal registration on the public record is evidence that a copyright was claimed. It is not a judgment that the claim is good. Several of these were filed by parties other than the original registrant, and a renewal claimed by a later party is the kind of thing that can be argued about. Whether the chain of title behind any of them stands up is a question we are not in a position to answer.

What we can say is that the record is not empty, and every list describing these films as free is asserting that it is. That is a much weaker position than it looks from the outside.

This is a record of research and not legal advice. If you hold a right in any of these films, or you think we have read the record wrong, write to mike@tapeterritory.com with what we missed and we will correct it here.

What we do about it

We publish none of these films, and every one of them now has a full record of its own in this section with the working written out. Follow any title above.

The practical lesson is short. A public domain list is not evidence. It is a belief somebody wrote down, usually before 1986, and repeated since. The registration record is the evidence, it is free to read, and it disagrees more often than anyone expects.

Why we did this research

Establishing what may be published is the first step before restoring a film and writing an audio description for it. That is what this site is for, and we do the same work on commission — audio description and captioning, with published rates.