Visibox Vintage Horror Pack is a collection of high-definition video clips designed to enhance visual experiences in audiovisual projects, live performances, and art projects. This collection contains 22 clips cut from four horror films released between 1942 and 1968, all of them widely treated as being in the public domain.
It’s our Halloween drop. Candlelit cellars, a skeleton rising out of an acid vat, a severed head that won’t stop talking, ghouls at the farmhouse window. Some of these films are genuine classics. Some are gloriously, wonderfully bad. All of them look great behind a band.
Use these clips as visual accompaniment to music, as VJ material, or as background visuals for a Halloween show, a costume party, or a haunted house. They’re built to set a mood and take a backseat to the main event while still giving people something to look at.
The Films
The Corpse Vanishes (1942). Bela Lugosi plays a scientist who knocks out brides at the altar with a drugged orchid, steals their bodies, and uses their glands to keep his elderly wife young. The two of them sleep in matching coffins. Nobody in the film finds this as strange as you will. 4 clips.
House on Haunted Hill (1959). Vincent Price offers five strangers $10,000 each to survive one night in a haunted house. Director William Castle sold it with “Emergo,” which was a plastic skeleton on a wire that flew over the theater audience at the big moment. Kids reportedly started bringing slingshots to shoot it down. 5 clips.
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962). A surgeon keeps his fiancée’s head alive in a pan in his lab, then goes shopping for a new body at strip clubs and bikini contests. The head is not thrilled about any of this. There’s also a monster locked in the closet. Shot in 1959 and shelved for three years, which tells you something. 5 clips.
Night of the Living Dead (1968). The serious one. George A. Romero shot it outside Pittsburgh on a tiny budget and invented the modern zombie in the process. It landed in the public domain because the distributor changed the title and left the copyright notice off the prints. One of the most important horror films ever made, and you can project it behind your band. 8 clips.
Technical Details
The clips are 1080P h.264-encoded MP4 files without audio, all in 16:9 (1920x1080). Night of the Living Dead was shot in 4:3, so it’s zoomed in to fill the frame and match the rest of the pack. These films survive mostly as low-resolution archival transfers, and this edition is cut from upscaled enhancements of those transfers. Three of the four are colorized: The Corpse Vanishes, House on Haunted Hill and The Brain That Wouldn’t Die were released in black and white. Night of the Living Dead stays in black and white. Credits are below.
These are scene cuts, not seamless loops. Each one is a self-contained sequence chosen for a single sustained visual idea, so it holds up on repeat, but you’ll see it wrap. A few clips are gory, so think about your audience before you put them on a big screen.
These films are widely treated as being in the public domain in the United States. We’re passing them along on that basis, so this pack does not carry our standard video pack license. As far as we’re aware, you can use, modify, and distribute this material for any purpose, commercial or otherwise, without permission or attribution. The scene selection and editing are ours, and a credit for that work is appreciated but not required.
One caveat, in the interest of being straight with you. Public domain status can vary by country, and we believe the upscaling and colorizing don’t create a new copyright in the footage, but we can’t promise that. If your use is a high-stakes one, especially outside the US, do your own clearance. The full notice is in the LICENSE.pdf included in the download.
How To Use
If you’re using Visibox, just drag ’em in! If you’re using VLC, select “Repeat One” from the Play menu. In QuickTime Player, select “Loop” from the View menu. These clips will also work in most VJ environments.
About The Films
The Corpse Vanishes (1942). Directed by Wallace Fox. Monogram Pictures.
House on Haunted Hill (1959). Directed by William Castle. William Castle Productions. Released by Allied Artists.
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962). Directed by Joseph Green. Rex Carlton Productions. Released by American International Pictures.
Night of the Living Dead (1968). Directed by George A. Romero. Image Ten. Released by the Walter Reade Organization.
Upscaled and colorized enhancements by Enhanced Public Domain. Scene selection, editing and encoding by Spaceage, LLC.