Hell's House

Hell's House, a US production starring Bette Davis and Pat O'Brien, was originally released in 1932. Under the US copyright laws governing works published between 1928 and 1963, a film entered the public domain if its initial 28-year copyright term was not renewed with the US Copyright Office during the 28th year after publication. A search of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database and the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE) reveals no renewal registration for this title. The original copyright was registered on January 30, 1932 (LP2817), but the mandatory renewal due in 1959 or 1960 was never filed. Consequently, the film's copyright expired at the end of its first term. The film is widely recognized as public domain by film historians and is extensively distributed by public domain specialists such as Alpha Video and Mill Creek Entertainment. It is also freely available on the Internet Archive without restriction, further confirming its status as a work that has fallen into the public domain due to non-renewal.