And Then There Were 38...I mean 39...I mean...

 

If the photo above looks like junk that you might walk right by at a flea market or thrift store...well, you aren't wrong.  However, it simultaneously happens to be priceless at the same time...at least to me, and for our purposes around here that is!

You probably know that one of the things we keep track of around here is the impressive amount of Godzilla (and other Toho) VHS releases that were put out during the reign of the format, which ended around 2002.  If you are so inclined, you can see all of these at our page: Godzilla - American Home Video Releases.

When it comes to GODZILLA vs. MEGALON, there was a famous, well, let's call it a misunderstanding, where copyright information was left off of the title card of the American version, allowing many, many folks to assume the film was in the public domain (Toho only rectified this issue in recent years).  We aren't going to get into any legal quagmires here, but suffice it to say, lots of fly-by-night, public domain-issuing videotape producers added it to their output:

Did I say lots?

If you are keeping score at home, that made 37 different ones...until now, that is!

This new discovery is a "double-feature" (which is simply cramming two films onto one tape that is usually already compromised in quality to begin with) of the perennial British classic, GORGO, with GODZILLA vs. MEGALON, by a company calling itself Matinee Theater, out of New York.  The tape and box are undated, but we do have one clue to its age:  what VHS collectors call a "big box" package, which is exactly what it sounds like (in fact, there is already one in the MEGALON family; at the end of the first row in the first photo).  Pretty much a product of the very early 1980's, these aren't clamshell cases, but simply oversized cardboard boxes with an area for the tape...or, in the case of this particular example, a channel for it to rattle around in.

"Hey, this isn't the tape we are talking about!" You are right,
sharp-eyed readers, this is a different Matinee Theater release,
which we will get to in a minute.

I've always wondered if the "big box" was an attempt at theft reduction, much like compact discs coming in "long boxes" for years. At any rate, because of this design, the cheaper ones are prone to getting crushed, which is what happened to this example.  This was made worse by the fact that this particular "big box" is even a little bigger than the standard ones.

With a little careful work (a trick I learned from a board game guru is how to use a clothes iron on cardboard!), I was able to restore it to a flatter condition, use acid free tissue paper to help it fill the useless empty spaces to better hold its shape, and get a decent scan of the front and back:

And...we now have 38 VHS editions of MEGALON.  

In the realm of Godzilla VHS, there is rare, mega-rare, and simply unheard of, and I'm afraid this tape falls into that last category.  I've never seen, heard, or even heard rumor of it existing.  In fact, I'm having a hard time even finding anything out about Matinee Theater, save this one other example from an auction:

This release doesn't even have an item number (the MEGALON tape is TMT20014...their 14th release?). It's of course possible that Matinee releases were localized to their region of the country, and maybe produced in low numbers.  It's also possible that they were in business a week and a half and then disappeared.  If I've learned anything, it's that, in the land of public domain VHS, anything is possible.  Anything. 

New discoveries have slowed waaaay down over the years, but the question to end this post on would be: are there more rare American VHS editions of MEGALON out there to be found? I want to say no, and scream it from the rooftops, believe me...but it wouldn't surprise me one bit if another such unknown release was out there somewhere, waiting to bubble to the top after decades of obscurity.  Which, I predict, will somehow end up expensive for me! Stay tuned!

ADDENDUM:  The sad thing is, because of a discrepancy that I finally untangled with another release, we are actually at 39 unique releases of MEGALON, and the VHS page has been updated!