I met legendary producer Dino De Laurentiis briefly once, in the summer of 1986. He popped in to say hello when I was interviewing Dino’s future wife Martha Schumacher, who was running the DeLaurentiis studios in Wilmington, N.C. — now known as Screen Gems EUE, it’s still the largest movie studio on the East Coast — and co-producing with Dino two films that I was there to watch being shot on the lot: John Guillerman’s “King Kong Lives” and Charles Martin Smith’s “Trick or Treat.”

Both were flops, something they had in common with practically everything (including Steven King’s sole directorial effort, “Maximum Overdrive”) that was released by the ill-fated DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group — though a couple of them found a cult following, notably David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet,” filmed on locations in nearby Lumberton, N.C.

“Manhunter,” in which Brian Cox played the first iteration of Hannibal Lecter, was such a financial failure that Dino sold his option on “The Silence of the Lambs” to Onion, though he smartly retained sequel rights. Dino later jumped back into the Lecter business with “Hannibal,” “Red Dragon” (a remake of “Manhunter”) and “Hannibal Rising,” his last major film in 2007. “The Last Legion,” a sword-and-sandals epic starring Colin Firth, was barely released by MGM and the Weinsteins that same year. Dino’s very last producing credit is apparently a period sex comedy known variously as “Virgin Territory” and “Decameron Pie,” available in this country only as a digital download.

Over an astounding 66 years, DeLaurentiis produced over 500 movies. The earlier ones were often in partnership with Carlo Ponti, including Federico Fellini’s back-to-back foreign language Oscar winners, “La Strada” and “Nights of Cabiria.” Among his many international co-productions released by Paramount in the U.S. were King Vidor’s “War and Peace,” Sidney Lumet’s “Serpico,” “Death Wish,”  “Dead Zone,” “Ragtime” and the 1977 version of “King Kong.”