7. A Sophisticated 70s Style Of Simian
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.'