Britain's Hammer Films had tried to acquire the rights to remake King Kong in the 60s, but had to settle for One Million years B.C. with Raquel Welch in a fur bikini and Harryhausen's dinosaurs. By the mid-70s the RKO rights holders had a change of heart, and Kong was up for grabs again. The winner was veteran Italian mogul Dino De Laurentiis, who wanted a blockbuster event to outdo Jaws. He almost succeeded, but his King Kong (1976) outraged fans of the original film. Disinterested in stop-motion, De Laurentiis and disaster-movie director John Guillermin spent well over a million of the film's $24m budget on a 42ft-high mechanised Kong robot. Unfortunately, it rarely worked, and for most of the screen-time Kong is actually makeup effects artist Rick Baker (who later designed Tim Burton's 2001 Planet Of The Apes) in a gorilla suit. No wonder Kong geeks carried protest placards at movie conventions reading, 'Don't Rape the Ape.'