Originally published in Kaiju Ramen #4.
Have you ever heard of Rex Dart the Eskimo spy? Did you know Jet Jaguar’s mother “never really love him”? Or that Godzookie is the father of actor Ron Pearlman? Probably not, because these are “fun facts” you would’ve learned watching the last two episodes of the second season of the cult classic TV series Mystery Science Theater 3000, which riffed Godzilla vs. Megalon and Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster (aka Ebirah, Horror of the Deep). (This means, as someone pointed out on Twitter, that two movies featured on MST3K are now in the Criterion Collection). Sadly, these are both among the 12 episodes that can’t be released on home media or streaming, at least without paying a kaiju-sized ransom. Why is that? Put on your Gizmonic Institute jumpsuit and get ready for an invention, er, information exchange.
Background: What is MST3K and “Public Domain”?
For those who don’t know, Mystery Science Theater 3000 (or “MST3K”) is a television series created by comedian Joel Hodgson for Minnesota public access station KTMA. It was picked up by Comedy Central and later aired on the SciFi (not “SyFy”) Channel, lasting for 10 seasons and almost 200 episodes. In 2017, after a successful Kickstarter campaign, the show was revived on Netflix for two more seasons. A 13th season was recently crowdfunded and will be aired on an independent steaming service. The premise is a host—Joel, Mike, or Jonah, depending on the season—and his robot friends Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo are forced to watch “cheesy movies” by villainous mad scientists for science and/or their amusement. Each episode features the three characters watching said movie in a theater and cracking jokes at the flick’s expense. The movies riffed on the show were the sort of B-movies one might see sitting on the shelf at a video store or airing late at night on local TV stations. (Yes, I’m that “old”). Including the aforementioned G-films, so far 19 episodes have showcased giant monster films, and several others, such as Time of the Apes and Mighty Jack, were tokusatsu properties. For many kaiju fans, this was their introduction to Godzilla’s box office rival, Gamera, who had five (and soon to be six) of his films given the MST3K treatment.
Hodgson and company didn’t usually ask for the rights to these movies because they assumed they were in the public domain. In other words, the copyrights on the flicks had expired, with the creators being dead and/or the studios defunct. This included the dubbed versions of Godzilla vs. Megalon and Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster. The former, especially, was so widely believed to be in public domain that it was released by dozens of VHS companies throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s. (I know because I owned a few). Luke Jaconetti, host of the Earth Destruction Directive podcast, even said on my podcast that Toho believed the dubbed version of Megalon had fallen into public domain, so they did nothing about it.
For a while.
Toho Said, “No-ho!”
Starting in the mid-1990s, Rhino Entertainment released multiple episodes of MST3K on VHS and DVD. The Godzilla vs. Megalon episode was included in the initial August 2006 release of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Volume 10, which also included the episodes for Swamp Diamonds, Teen-Age Strangler, and The Giant Spider Invasion. Unfortunately, as TV’s Frank said in a comedy sketch, Toho said, “No-ho,” and immediately sent a “cease and desist” (CND) letter to Rhino. Think of this as a warning shot for a copyright lawsuit. In order to avoid facing Toho’s lawyers in court, Rhino was told to pull their “illegal” release of Godzilla vs. Megalon. (Just ignore the fact that the “fair use” clause of copyright law makes allowances for criticism and parody so long as it is transformative, which I would argue MST3K is).
Within two months, the box set was replaced by “Volume 10.2.” Not wanting to miss an opportunity to crack jokes and vent their frustrations, the new set included a brand new host segment (the first since the show ended in 1999) featuring Joel, Crow, Servo, and the Mads (Dr. Forrester and TV’s Frank). In it, Dr. Forrester hosts a seminar on how to “upgrade” the box set with the new disc, blaming Frank for not acquiring the rights to a certain film he euphemistically calls “Japanese lizard movie.” In fact, throughout the whole sketch, nobody utters a word from the title other than “versus,” making sure to cover their mouths and speak gibberish. The sketch shows Joel removing the disc from the box set, throwing the Megalon disc into a trashcan, and replacing it with one containing the episode for 1959 B-movie The Giant Gila Monster. The irony is this is meant to be taken seriously, with fans who owned the set being encouraged to toss out the old disc. The “10.2” edition has since been the only version of the box set being sold.
Keep Circulating the Tapes and URL’s
With the advent of the internet came the Digital Archive Project, a website dedicated to distributing television series free of charge in digital format. One of these shows was, and to a certain extent still is, MST3K. According to the MST3K Wiki,
The current qualifications for a show to be offered via DAP include: no commercial release, no immediate plans for it to be released, and not currently in production. MST3K is a slight exception, due to the large number of episodes and long odds of a full release of every last episode due to the divergent rights issues involved, the site subscribes to standard MST3K tape trading theory of no distribution of commercially released episodes and removal from distribution of episodes with announced and confirmed releases.
Tape trading has been a central facet of the MST3K fandom since the beginning. The credits for every episode ended with the line, “Keep circulating the tapes.” Much of the show’s popularity stemmed from word-of-mouth as fans would record episodes from TV using their VCR’s (remember those?) and show them to friends. Nowadays with the popularity of streaming, MSTies (MST3K fans) are encouraged to “circulate the URL’s.”
I bring this up because it is possible to still watch Joel and the ‘Bots riff Godzilla and his kaiju co-stars thanks to the DAP. They can be downloaded from the DAP website (https://tracker.dapcentral.org/), but these are often uploaded by fans to YouTube, Dailymotion, and/or Vimeo. However, they don’t always stay on those sites and have to be re-uploaded sneakily. That’s why I recommend going to www.club-mst3k.com, an aggregate website with links to where every episode of MST3K can be streamed. Be aware that since these are often VHS rips, many still include commercials from the TV broadcast and aren’t the highest quality video.
“I Have Come Here to Chew Sushi and Kick Butt…”
It’s a tragedy that Toho blocked the release of MST3K’s Godzilla episodes because they rank as some of the best in the series. Godzilla vs. Megalon was named the 19th best episode by the MSTies who backed the “Bring Back MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000” Kickstarter. The jokes, while at points a bit culturally insensitive, never mock Godzilla in a mean-spirited way.
Here are a few of my personal favorite highlights from each episode:
212 – Godzilla vs. Megalon
- (Hiroshi yells “Roku-chan!” which in the dub sounds like “Roxanne”) à Joel: “You don’t have wear that red dress!” (A reference to the song “Roxanne” by The Police).
- (Godzilla finally arrives to save Jet Jaguar) à Crow: “I have come to chew sushi and kick butt…and I’m all out of sushi!” (A reference to a line said by “Rowdy” Roddy Piper in John Carpenter’s They Live).
- The final host segment features the (in)famous “Jet Jaguar Fight Song,” a humourously inaccurate translation of “Godzilla & Jet Jaguar Punch-Punch-Punch” into broken English. The “lyrics” are subtitled over the clip of Jet walking with the main cast. My personal favorite lines are, “He mother never really love him,” and, “His head looks like Jack Nicholson.”
213 – Godzilla vs the Sea Monster
- (During one of the Infant Island musical numbers for Mothra): “Rocketing to number one, it’s ‘Mothra, You Are Our God.’ It’s got a great beat, and you can worship to it!”
- (Godzilla and Ebirah posture before fighting):
- Joel (as Godzilla): “Yeah, well, your mama’s a soft-shell crab! How does that crab you, huh?” à Crow (as Ebirah): “Oh, yeah? Well, your mama was Robert Oppenheimer!”
- This is a reference to J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who headed the Manhattan Project and the development of the first atomic bombs.
- In the fourth host segment, Crow and Servo don’t heed Joel’s warning and dress up as the Shobijin to mockingly summon Mothra—and it works! He (yes, Mothra is voiced by future MST3K host Michael J. Nelson) appears in the Hexfield screen and advises the ‘Bots not to call him unless they mean it, but he’s otherwise mellow and exchanges a few jokes with them. When Joel comes back, he doesn’t believe Crow and Servo when they tell him what happened.
Conclusion: A Best Brains Production
Kaiju have been a staple of MST3K from the beginning, so it’s no wonder Godzilla made appearances. In fact, despite Toho forcing the Godzilla episodes to be buried, the clip of Godzilla’s infamous flying dropkick from Megalon was used in the show’s intro for several seasons. While the DVD of the Megalon episode is the Holy Grail of MST3K box sets, and their availability for online streaming is in constant flux, these are well worth finding and watching for any kaiju fan. After you see them, check out MST3K’s other kaiju offerings. (Perhaps I’ll write a future article or two on those episodes).
To learn more about these “lost” MST3K episodes, please visit the MST3K Wiki.
