15 Worst Movies That Somehow Won Oscars

2. King Kong (1976)

Won For: Best Visual Effects

In 1933, Hollywood was changed forever by the tale of a Great Ape, his girlfriend and the men who wanted to split them up. Well, sort of, anyway. The original King Kong might not have had the technology to be visually dazzling, but it made do with practical effects and screen magic to encourage the audience's imagination, and it's still the best Kong movie ever released.

The first attempt to remake it - in 1976 with Jeff Bridges in the non-monkey lead - was everything the '33 iteration wasn't. Sure, it had a much more impressive budget for visual effects, which got it an Oscar, but those effects have arguably aged worse than the early version. And it really doesn't help the whole tawdry affair that the money spent on effects would have been better spent on a director who would get more out of his cast, or just generally on some acting lessons for everyone involved.

Because King Kong '76 is a shlocky, sloppy mess, roaringly hilarious in places (and never intentionally) and wholly unnecessary from the opening credits onwards. It smacks of the arrogance of modernity, and its disastrous over-reaching is almost poetically pertinent.