For those who don’t know, Godzilla is heavily protected by our copyright system. There have been incidents where companies nearly were sued for just creating parodies of Godzilla, but believe it or not, there was a very brief period of time where the King of the Monsters was copyright free in America, sort of. In 1973, Toho released their 13th Godzilla film in Japan, Godzilla Vs Megalon where Godzilla fights a giant bug monster named Megalon, who is controlled by a secret underground cult that wants to destroy the world. Godzilla also fights Megalon alongside his giant robot friend Jet Jaguar. Yeah, Godzilla Vs. Megalon wasn’t a good monster movie, but it’s so cheesy that it’s absolutely hilarious. In 1976, an English-dubbed version of the film was released in the United States. For some strange reason, the English release of the movie didn’t have any copyright notices. Because of this mistake, the film was accidentally put in the public domain. Since the film was now copyright free, in 1977, Godzilla Vs Megalon ended up becoming the first ever Godzilla film to premiere on American television. It premiered on NBC, with John Belushi hosting and wearing a Godzilla suit. When home video became a thing, there was a ton of Godzilla Vs. Megalon VHS tapes released. A lot of these tapes had very strange cover art. The most famous example is a VHS cover depicting Godzilla and Megalon fighting atop the twin towers. Later in the 1990s, Godzilla Vs Megalon was featured on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a sci-fi show where the main characters riff on B-movies. Proving that Godzilla Vs Megalon wasn’t just a public domain movie that distributors took advantage of, the movie was fairly popular despite its poor quality. Eventually, Toho discovered the mistake and corrected the rights issue. Something like this could never happen in the age of the internet. If the American film distributors had made this mistake today, Toho would have found out immediately.
