King Kong (1976)

"There is a girl out there who might be running for her life from some gigantic turned-on ape."

Updating King Kong for a modern audience was never going to be an easy task, especially not in the 70's.  The original film was lodged in audiences memories for a multitude of reasons, but what endured was the heart and drama of the story, and the truly excellent special effects by stop motion pioneer, Willie O'Brien. Preserving, or indeed, improving upon the soul of the original wouldn't be the hardest task. No, the toughest part of this re-boot was going to fall on the special effects team; just how do you film a giant, "Neither beast nor man" creature in a way that would convince the more 'sophisticated' cinema fans of 1976. The challenge was going to lie in the fact that special effects hadn't really changed all that much in terms of technique since the original film in 1933; there were no computer assisted creations, and it was all going to have to be done 'in camera', meaning either stop motion or animatronics. Would the production team have the creativity and, let's be honest, madness to pull this off?

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