We’re always happy to take donations of audio cassettes like this, and look forward to continuing the process of bringing them online. Who knows what other lost treasures lurk in the world?
A very large thank you to Bob Lardine’ s family for their donation of these tapes, as well as friends of the Internet Archive who helped fund purchase of the tape decks used for playback and digitization.
Screams in the Vault: Public Domain Horror in the Age of IP
Posted on June 13, 2025 by Sterling Dudley
An image of Mickey Mouse holding a match and looking at a ghoulish whatsapp number list figure on the wall in 1929's The Haunted House. The right said of the image has text saying "Screams in the Vault: Public Domain Horror in the Age of IP".
As many iconic works have entered into the public domain since 2019, there has been a surge of horror film adaptations. These horror adaptations have received strong critiques for their deviation from or failure to say something unique about their source material. Ultimately, this criticism has spilled over into skepticism about the public domain itself, framing it as a creative dead-end. This critique, however, overlooks the underlying benefit of the public domain: the ability for anyone, not just corporations, to create their own version/adaptation of the same work. Despite consistent criticism surrounding public domain horror adaptations, a further study of these works reveals underlying contemporary industry conditions that lead to their creation, and demonstrates the enduring importance of the public domain in enabling creative freedom beyond pure corporate control.
These adaptations exist within the current characteristics of contemporary filmmaking; a type of filmmaking largely driven by financial risk-aversion that relies on Intellectual Property (IP) adaptations rather than original stories to guarantee audience attendance and big money earnings.