King Kong (1933), starring Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong (VIDEO)

Any list of New York films has to include one of the most famous images of the city ever committed to celluloid: the giant stop-motion ape beating his chest atop the Empire State Building and swiping at the biplanes that have come to take him down. King Kong’s tragic end at the top of the tower holds up remarkably well almost eight decades later, not just because of the practical special effects (which impart a dreamlike reality of their own), but because he’s far from the only visitor to have met his downfall in the city that never sleeps. It is, of course, a jungle out there.—Alison Willmore

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Watch the trailer for King Kong

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