Is The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) public domain?

The evidence we relied on to restore, describe and publish it — in full, so you can check it.

Public domain in the United States

The finding, and the working behind it

US public domain by failure to renew. Published 1960, so renewal fell due in the 28th year, 1987-88 -- after 1978 and therefore fully inside the Copyright Office online catalog, where a nil result is evidence rather than an absence of searching. Six searches on 5 September 2026 against api.publicrecords.copyright.gov (registration_class=RE) returned zero renewal registrations: the distinctive words unquoted, the exact phrase, the studio Filmgroup, director Roger Corman, writer Charles B. Griffith, and composer Fred Katz. The score is searched separately because a renewed score traps an unrenewed picture. Searches are run loosely as well as exactly, because House on Haunted Hill returns nil on its exact title and was in fact renewed as House on A Haunted Hill. The print was also examined end to end and carries no copyright notice at head or tail, which corroborates but does not decide the question. Verified by the owner 5 September 2026; queries and results are kept with the master in rights.json.

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.

The copy, and what we changed

The print we started from: The source print for The Little Shop of Horrors on archive.org
Researched: 2026-09-05
What we did to the print: deflicker; deblock; nlmeans denoise (s=3.0); measured tone curve; gradfun deband; unsharp; CAS. Verified by eye against the source on twelve paired frames -- fine texture (the plant filaments, a checked tablecloth, houndstooth) survives, and the darkest frame in the film gained shadow separation rather than crushing. 103,323 frames in and out, duration matched to 0.1 ms, so the picture did not move. 303 audio description cues seated by measured length in measured pauses: 0 overlaps, 0 cues over dialogue. Delivery mix -17.0 LUFS, true peak -2.0 dBTP; narration sits +1.0 LU clear of the film dialogue. Tape Territory bumper joined at +5.005s without re-encoding the picture.

What this does and does not mean

This is a finding about United States copyright, made in good faith from the public record. Copyright terms differ by country, and a film in the public domain here may still be protected elsewhere.

A negative search proves that no record was found, which is not identical to proving that no record exists. The Copyright Office says as much about its own catalogs. Where a search could not be decisive we say so above rather than rounding it up to certainty.

Restoring a public domain film gives nobody any new rights over the film, including us: this print is free to take, use and pass on, exactly as the original is.

The audio description is not part of that. It is an original work written and recorded by Always on Top Entertainment LLC — free to listen to here, and licensed separately for reuse. If you hold a right in this film and we have it wrong, write to mike@tapeterritory.com and we will take it down while we check.

Watch it

The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) is free to watch here, restored and audio described, with no account and no advertising.

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.