In 1898, a Thomas Edison film crew captured the Key West burial of sailors killed when the U.S.S. Maine was sunk in Havana Harbor. The grainy footage is a glimpse into the isle’s golden era, when it was one of the largest and wealthiest cities in the state. But the cinematic touchstone of the larger archipelago is located east on Key Largo. Yeah, OK, director John Huston used Hollywood sets to recreate the interior of Largo’s Caribbean Club. But the film’s opening shot is indeed a bus traveling along the Overseas Highway, which connects the Keys to the mainland. The bridge endures the yearly threat of major hurricane damage until about November when, as crippled hotelier James Temple describes it to ex-G.I. northerner Frank McCloud, “the thermometer will go down to about 100, the sand flies and mosquitoes will disappear, and it will be right livable for three months on the Keys… except for the tourists.” It’s an approaching hurricane and some unwelcome visitors which drive the action in Key Largo – while also highlighting how difficult it can be for cinema villains to leave these islands. When McCloud is forced to pilot mobster Johnny Rocco’s gang by boat to Cuba, he instead turns on them with deadly force. License to Kill opens with drug lord Franz Sanchez attempting to fly a Cessna to Cuba, only to have James Bond reel it in with a hook and cable over Key West. Sanchez later escapes from a police convoy when his truck drives off the side of Seven Mile Bridge. It’s along this same highway that secret agent Harry Tasker and a couple of Harrier jets catch up with corrupt antiques dealer, Juno Skinner in True Lies. Her limo plunges off the bridge shortly before terrorists vaporize an unnamed Key with a nuclear warhead. One person who painted a brighter cinematic portrait of Keys residents is Ricou Browning, who filmed the challenging underwater scenes as The Creature from the Black Lagoon in Northern Florida, before going on to produce the 1963 boy-and-his-dolphin pic, Flipper. The film is set in the Keys, and, like Black Lagoon, features underwater shots that remind viewers of the amazing life that exists beneath the surf. This has made the Keys an upscale tourist destination, and even utilitarian Seven Mile Bridge appears fashionable in 2 Fast 2 Furious. Further east, Islamorada is the resort where engineer Joe Ross is taken in by a sun-drenched confidence scheme in The Spanish Prisoner, while Key Largo is one of the locales where a mother-daughter confidence team scam wealthy men into lust and marriage in Heartbreakers. All that said, it’s a good bet Thomas Edison would hardly recognize the modern denizens stumbling drunkenly across the skin-baring pleasure isle showcased in The Real World: Key West. It’s just that classy.