It’s become an annual ritual: Every Jan. 1, more classic works of art or characters enter the public domain, and exploitation filmmakers with a tiny budget and a big taste for grisliness are scouring the list, looking for suddenly free intellectual property to turn into horror fare. Hence the slasher films that have already been created or are in the works turning beloved characters into homicidal maniacs, like the infamous “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey.”

But these Pd-sploitation filmmakers are really picking low-hanging fruit and not digging nearly deep enough into the lists for ideas. So we’ve identified some films, novels and even memoirs and pop songs that are brand new to the public domain, as of the beginning of 2025, just begging to be bloodied up. Yes, including Popeye, the seeming innocent who arguably always had a bit of the glint of a serial killer in his eye — but also...