Mystery Science Theater 3000

Mystery Science Theater 3000 (often abbreviated as "MST3k") was an American cult television comedy series created by Joel Hodgson and produced by Best Brains, Inc. that ran from 1988 to 1999. The series features a man and his robot sidekicks, trapped on board an orbiting satellite, where they are forced to watch various "B-Movies" for a mad scientist, who seeks to find the worst movie ever made to unleash upon the world as a weapon to take over the human race. To cope with the bad films they must watch, the host and his robots provide running commentary on the film, making fun of its flaws and wisecracking (or "riffing") their way through the film in the style of a movie theater peanut gallery.

The series notably features several Japanese monster films during its earlier seasons. Most notably, the show featured Showa-era Gamera films that were brought to the United States by Sandy Frank during the 1960s and 1970s.

Selected episode listing

Season 0

• K04 Gamera vs Barugon
• K05 Gamera
• K06 Gamera vs Gyaos
• K07 Gamera vs Zigra
• K08 Gamera vs Guiron

Season 2

• 212 Godzilla vs Megalon
• 213 Godzilla vs the Sea Monster

Season 3

• 302 Gamera (remake of episode K05)
• 304 Gamera vs Barugon (remake of episode K04)
• 308 Gamera vs Gyaos (remake of episode K06)
• 312 Gamera vs Guiron (remake of episode K08)
• 318 Gamera vs Zigra (remake of episode K07)

Season 9

• 909 Gorgo

Due to the first season (often referred to as season "0" or "K") airing on a public access station in Minnesota, the five Gamera episodes were remade for the series when it was picked up by Comedy Central. However, due to licensing issues with Sandy Frank, the Gamera films were only aired a couple of times before the rights to the episodes lapsed and were not renewed.

The Godzilla vs Megalon episode was ultimately released on DVD as part of the "Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume 10" box set, but due to confusion regarding ownership of the film's English dub version (Best Brains had been led to believe that Godzilla vs Megalon and Godzilla vs the Sea Monster were public domain films) the set was pulled within weeks of its release and ultimately re-released two years later with Giant Gila Monster replacing Godzilla vs Megalon. Included on the new set (known as Volume 10.2) was a brand-new host segment showing the crew giving a tutorial on swapping out the movies, and TV's Frank being admonished by Dr. Forrester for not obtaining the rights from Toho. Throughout the segment, the title Godzilla vs Megalon is either referred to as the "Japanese giant lizard movie", or intentionally has its syllables grunted out or coughed over. There were never-before-seen behind the scenes footage (which was also released through MST3K.com) from the original series, in addition to an online store with all new merchandise. The website was launched on November 5, 2007.

Gamera and Jet Jaguar songs

A recurring segment of the series were sketches featuring parodies of music from the episode's film. A couple of the most notable of these were the "Gamera Song" and "Jet Jaguar Song".