Two Thousand Maniacs!

Under the 1909 Copyright Act, works published between 1964 and 1977 were granted an automatic renewal term of 67 years by the Copyright Renewal Act of 1992, provided they were published with a valid copyright notice. However, 'Two Thousand Maniacs!' (1964), directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis, is a well-documented case of a film entering the public domain due to a lack of a proper copyright notice on the original release prints. Legal and film industry consensus, as noted in the Film Superlist and various scholarship on exploitation cinema, confirms that the film's copyright was never properly secured or maintained because the required notice was omitted. This defect was common among independent 'grindhouse' productions of the era. The film has been widely distributed for decades by numerous public domain labels (such as Alpha Video, Mill Creek, and Something Weird Video) without legal challenge from the original producers or their estates. Unlike its 2005 remake '2001 Maniacs', the 1964 original lacks any valid active registration in the US Copyright Office records that would indicate a cured notice or an exception to the notice requirement.