The New Year's holiday marks the end of the festive holiday season, and is a very significant event for people who either look forward to the new year or are glad to see the old one gone. It's a time to reflect on the good times and the learning experiences, with hopes and resolutions to make the next year better. During such times, people watch the ball drop in Times Square, enjoy the festivities and visit relatives. In the past (the 1980s, in particular), New Year's Eve was punctuated by Marx Brothers and Three Stooges marathons on local and cable television (and as of this writing, the Three Stooges are making their return to the New Year's holiday in re-mastered form on AMC). More recently, multi-day Twilight Zone marathons (some lasting as long as 72 hours) cover the entire celebration (airing on SyFy after years of being a local WPIX Channel 11 New York tradition). In the midst of all of these marathons, the mid-1990s New Year's holidays were accompanied by TNT's MonsterVision film marathons consisting of sci-fi creature features. These fests were most prominently represented by Toho kaiju eiga. However, these weren't the kaiju eiga that appeared in the WOR-TV Channel 9 Thanksgiving Holiday monster marathons or the obscurities directed by Jun Fukuda (including Godzilla Vs. Gigan (1972), Godzilla Vs. The Sea Monster (aka Ebirah, 1966) and Son of Godzilla (1967)). Rather, they were the package of films where most saw distribution through Henry Saperstein's United Productions of America.

Between the New Year's holiday of 1994/1995 and New Year's weekend 1995/1996, New Year's Eve would feature the likes of Godzilla's offbeat counterparts. Rodan (1956), Frankenstein Conquers the World (aka Frankenstein Vs. Baragon, 1965) and War of the Gargantuas (aka The Frankenstein Brothers: Sanda Vs. Gaira, 1966) contributed to an exciting warm-up act. People lucky enough to stay away from rowdy New Year's parties and the televised countdowns saw the two Rodans destroy the Japanese countryside, a giant Frankenstein's monster battle a burrowing dinosaur and two enormous bigfoot-type monsters destroy each other (and some Japanese cities). Microwaveable Hors d'oeuvres went well with these movies, as they do with any New Year's celebration.

Following the miscellany of kaiju eiga were Godzilla (aka Gojira, 1954), Godzilla Vs. Mothra (aka Godzilla Vs. The Thing, 1964), Godzilla Vs. Monster Zero (aka Monster Zero, aka Invasion of Astro Monster, 1965), Godzilla's Revenge (aka All Monsters Attack, 1969) and Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975). Viewers saw Godzilla attacking Tokyo (in his first-ever film appearance), battling Mothra for the first time in his long career, defending the Earth alongside Rodan against King Ghidorah, fighting the cyborg Mechagodzilla and many other monsters.

The 1995/1996 New Year's holiday landed over a weekend, letting the fest begin on Saturday, December 30th. That year, the marathon had kicked off with an episode of Hanna-Barbera's Godzilla cartoon (originally created in 1977 for Saturday morning programming broadcasts) and lasted until Rudy and Gogo's Flaming Cheese Ball (on New Year's Eve beginning at 8pm, beginning with The Blob (1958)).

As with any television tradition, changes in programming personnel and subsequently, television programming, leads to changes, leaving such marathons to end up either airing on other holidays or during the regular MonsterVision slot (Saturday nights). Any fan who seeks to re-create such a marathon can easily do so by picking up the Classic Media releases of these classics. There is a wonderful boxed set of the Godzilla films seen on MonsterVision (in both American and Japanese versions) along with a Classic Media double disc set of Rodan and War of the Gargantuas. Media Blasters has released a disc of Frankenstein Vs. Baragon/Frankenstein Conquers the World which includes the American, Japanese and International cuts of the film. With multiple versions of all of the movies involved, the possibilities are endless.....