King Kong

Without a doubt, De Laurentiis' remake of Cooper and Schoedsack's classic is the biggest con job ever pulled on the unsuspecting American public. Having spent somewhere in the vicinity of $24 million on his epic, De Laurentiis told the world that his Kong was a fabulously expensive and technically amazing, full-sized mechanical ape that stood 40 feet tall, when in reality the majority of Kong's scenes were played by makeup man Rick Baker in a monkey suit! The Italian producer fought hard to bring his version of the 1933 classic to the screen and was even forced to give Universal's rival production, "The Legend of King Kong," a percentage of his profits to persuade ...