Before King Kong and long before Jurassic Park came The Lost World, a dinosaur movie based on the novel by Arthur Conan Doyle -- not to be confused with The Lost World: Jurassic Park, also about dinosaurs.

Though lacking the psychological dimension of King Kong, the overall story is similar: a band of explorers journey to a remote part of the world, run across ancient creatures, narrowly escape, and wind up bringing a specimen back to the city, where it can wreak havoc on the streets. Kong is a far superior take on the story, but The Lost World is entertaining and historically significant, being the first feature film to use stop-motion animation to bring the creatures to life. It's done remarkably well. King Kong, of course, would improve upon the technique and create not just a spectacle but a personable character, which is almost what dinosaurs and Kong would do again with computer-generated imagery decades later: Jurassic Park would break the technological ground, and Peter Jackson's King Kong remake would use it to create a character we can empathize with.