Public Domain
The Most Dangerous Game
1932 · RKO Radio Pictures · Dir. Irving Pichel
When legendary hunter Bob Rainsford is shipwrecked on the perilous reefs surrounding a mysterious island, he finds himself the guest of the reclusive and eccentric Count Zaroff. While he is very gracious at first, Zaroff eventually forces Rainsford and two other shipwreck survivors, brother and sister Eve and Martin Towbridge, to participate in a sadistic game of cat and mouse in which they are the prey and he is the hunter.
Confidence
95
— Legal Reasoning —
Why this status applies
The Most Dangerous Game was registered for copyright by RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., on September 15, 1932 (LP3251). Under the 1909 Copyright Act, works published between 1928 and 1963 required a formal renewal with the US Copyright Office during the 28th year of the first term to maintain protection. For this film, the renewal window opened in 1959 and closed at the end of 1960.
Comprehensive searches of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database, the U Penn online Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE), and David Pierce's 'Motion Picture Copyrights and Renewals 1950–1959' confirm that no renewal was ever filed for this title. While RKO filed renewals for many of its 1930s hits (such as 'King Kong'), 'The Most Dangerous Game' was famously overlooked. Consequently, the film entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 1961.
Because the film is in the public domain, it has been widely distributed for decades by various labels (Alpha Video, Criterion, Kino Lorber) and is freely available on the Internet Archive without copyright challenge. Its status as a public domain work is a well-documented fact in film history and legal scholarship regarding the 'lost' RKO copyrights.
— Cited Sources —
Supporting facts
- Stanford Copyright Renewal Database (https://exhibits.stanford.edu/copyrightrenewals)
- U Penn Online Books Page: Catalog of Copyright Entries (https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/)
- Hurst / D. Richard Baer, Film Superlist: Motion Pictures in the U.S. Public Domain
- AFI Catalog of Feature Films
- Internet Archive: The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
Research summary based on cited sources, not legal advice. Always consult a qualified copyright attorney before commercial use.