Welcome to Public Domain Theater, your home for the wonderful world of films that have (in the United States, at least) fallen into the public domain, and are free for everyone to see!

This month, we have for you the film noir thriller The Chase. Based on the novel The Black Path of Fear by crime fiction master Cornell Woolrich, it tells the tale of an innocent man who gets work as a chauffeur, but the guy they’re chauffeuring around 1) is a mob boss, 2) is dangerously eccentric, and 3) has a right-hand man played by Peter Lorre, so you know they’re up to some sinister shit. Working for someone like that would be a precarious situation all on its own – add in a burgeoning romance with the boss’s wife, and all hell soon breaks loose.

The film is wonderfully tense and atmospheric, diving deeper and deeper into paranoia as it goes on, with the forces arrayed against our heroes becoming almost surreal in their reach and power. In the words of film critic Eddie Muller, The Chase “is as close as any ’40s film came to the subconscious cinema of David Lynch”. How’s that for an endorsement?

But maybe this sort of bleak and intense cinema isn’t what you’re in the mood for. No fear! We also have the Merrie Melodies cartoon “Prest-O Change-O” – directed by Chuck Jones, it features a pair of curious dogs who wander into a stage magician’s house and get up to all sorts of shenanigans with the magic show props lying around. Most notable is the rabbit who comes out of the magician’s hat – a chuckling, troublemaking critter who would later be given the name “Happy Hare” and is widely regarded as being a prototype for that future cartoon megastar Bugs Bunny.

So whether you wanna be on the edge of your seat or laugh till you collapse, we have the movies for you, right here at Public Domain Theater!

Opening Cartoon:

Feature Presentation: