With around 200 episodes, Mystery Science Theater 3000 has covered so many sub-sections of movies. They have Japanese superhero movies, old timey movies about juvenile delinquents, way too many “movies” that are just two episodes of a TV show edited together, and so on. One of these staples is the good, old fashioned giant monster movie.

Godzilla, Gamera, and their many knockoffs have shown up on the Satellite of Love throughout the years…though strangely mostly in season 3. With Godzilla: King of the Monsters here, it’s time to take a look at the kaiju movies MST3K has to offer.

The problem is figuring out what movies I would personally consider a kaiju showcase. There are a lot of movies with dinosaurs and stuff, but do they really have the same spirit of a Godzilla-esque film? The way I see it, a kaiju movie needs to involve a giant being interacting with a modern society. Simply going back in time or to a land where giant lizards roam free doesn’t cut it.

THE BLACK SCORPION (S1E13)

The first season of MST3K is pretty rough to get through. Not as rough as the first-first season on KTMA, but the movies weren’t easy to endure and the riffs usually didn’t make up for it. There’s a reason why they never played the reruns back when the show was still airing on Comedy Central. Black Scorpion was the final episode of that season and, to its credit, they were starting to figure things out.