Is The Naked Witch (1961) public domain?
The copyright record for this film, written out in full so you can check it.
Public domain in the United States
What is usually said
Public domain, never renewed.
The finding, and the working behind it
Public domain in the United States: registered LP27580 in 1961, with no renewal under the title, the director or the company.
The year on this one takes care. It was shot in 1960 and did not reach screens until 1964, and the catalogs often leave the year off. The registration is what fixes the term: 28 August 1961, so the renewal fell due in 1988 or 1989, well inside the online record.
Searches on the title, on the director Larry Buchanan and on Alexander Enterprises return no renewal. A search of every class for the exact phrase returns three records: two recorded documents and one unrelated text.
The register, as it stands
- Original registration
- LP27580, (C) Alexander Enterprises, 28 August 1961
- Renewal fell due
- 1988–1989, inside the online catalog
- Renewal found
- none
- Searched
- 2026-09-19
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.
Where these numbers came from
- Copyright Office online records, searched by title, director, company and across all classes.
- Catalog of Copyright Entries, Motion Pictures, for LP27580.
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.
This is a record of research and not legal advice. If you hold a right in this film, or you think we have read the record wrong, write to [email protected] with what we missed and we will correct it here.
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.