Part of making a great movie is choosing a great location.

Try to imagine Home Alone without a big, sprawling mansion. How about The Shining, but without the Overlook Hotel?

In great films, the location basically becomes another character. Of course, there’s a big difference between the location portrayed on film and the actual location of the shoot.

For instance…

1. The Overlook Hotel from Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining”

…is actually a Mount Hood, Oregon, hotel called the Timberline Lodge. It hosts skiers and wedding parties throughout the year.

The Timberline was built during the Great Depression to provide jobs for unemployed Americans. Workers made $1 per day as they labored in frigid conditions.

The lodge’s architect, Gilbert Stanley Underwood, relied on natural local materials to blend his creation into the surrounding environment. Even the steep pitches on the Timberline’s roof mimic the peak of Mt. Hood, making the lodge seem as if it’s always been there.

To be clear, Stanley Kubrick used aerial establishing shots of the Oregon Timberline during the opening of his film, then shot exterior footage of the building. None of the interior shots were filmed at the Timberline Lodge.

Oh, and if you plan a visit, you should know that there’s no actual hedge maze there. That was built at England’s Elstree Studios. The set crew built a facade of the Timberline’s south-facing walls for the maze’s backdrop.

The Timberline’s management actually influenced an important detail in this iconic film. Originally, the creepiest (and weirdest) events of the novel occur in room 217. Timberline management asked Kubrick not to use that room number; they were afraid that guests would be too scared to stay in that room. So Kubrick substituted it for room 237, which doesn’t exist at the real lodge.

Of course, human behavior is hard to predict. The Timberline claims that room 217 is the most-requested room in the entire lodge.

Stephen King, who wrote the book Kubrick adapted to film, based the Overlook Hotel on the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, CO.

King and his wife Tabitha stayed there in the fall of 1974 as the hotel was shutting down for the winter. The creepiness of being the only guests in an enormous building along with a vivid nightmare about his son being chased through the halls by a fire hose gave King the basis of his unforgettable novel.

The Stanley Hotel is also still in operation. It’s where director Mick Garis portions of the King-sanctioned mini-series in the ’90s.

Visitors to the Stanley Hotel can enjoy a hedge maze, which was added in 2015 to play up the connection to The Shining (even though fans of the book know the hedges should be topiary animals and not a maze). For those with a sturdy backbone, there are also paranormal activity tours through the historic building.

2. The Headquarters in “Men in Black”

…is actually a ventilation building for the Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel in New York.

If you don’t live in New York (and even if you do), you may not know that the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel is the longest continuous tunnel for automobile traffic in North America. It passes under the East River and makes it easier to get from Brooklyn to Manhattan.

Of course, when you have four lanes of traffic moving underground, you need to vent the carbon dioxide emitted from all those cars’ tailpipes. That’s where ventilation buildings like the one used in Men in Black come in.

They look like any other building, but they’re stuffed with ducts, blowers, sound baffles, and exhaust ports. If there really is a secret government force that investigates alien life on Earth, a ventilation building would make a pretty good hiding place.

3. The Joker’s Attacks in “The Dark Knight”

…were filmed largely in Chicago.

When Joker and his crew robbed the Gotham National Bank, they were actually at the abandoned Old Chicago Main Post Office on West Van Buren and Canal Streets.

Director Christopher Nolan may have been onto something in his choice of locations. Most people assume that Gotham City is a fictionalized New York, but some of the earliest creators of the Batman comic books seem to think that Chicago is a more appropriate real-life analogue.

Neal Adams is an artist who has worked on the Batman titles since 1970. He’s a firm believer in the Gotham–Chicago connection.

“Chicago has had a reputation for a certain type of criminality,” Adams told the Associated Press. “Batman is in this kind of corrupt city and trying to turn it back into a better place.”

There are more practical proofs of the association, too, Adams said.

“Chicago has alleys [while New York doesn’t],” he said. “Back alleys, that’s where Batman fights all the bad guys.”

There’s another reason why film crews choose the Windy City over the Big Apple.

“Chicago is very hospitable to filming,” Kate Levinson tells FashionBeans, who runs the Chicago-based Levinson’s Locations.” They’ve worked very hard to keep it easier to shoot here, so we can bring the business here.”

It’s hard to believe, but there was a time when New York had a laissez-faire attitude toward filming. The infamous French Connection scene of a car chasing a subway train was done without permits and without other cars or pedestrians knowing what was happening.

4. The Hostile Planet from “Interstellar”

…is actually a glacier in Iceland called Svínafellsjökull.

The strange landscape was also featured in the latest season of Game of Thrones (you can probably guess that it’s a site north of the wall).

Tourists can hire a guide and actually hike the icy terrain.

Really nerdy tourists can even dress like their favorite wildling, but don’t try to make the hike without strapping on your crampons first. It is ice, after all. It gets slippery.

5. Luke Skywalker’s Childhood Home on Tatooine

…is actually a hotel in Tunisia. It’s called Hotel Sidi Driss, and it’s in the town of Matmata, if you plan on visiting.

Matmata is just tiny town in Tunisia, but the Hotel Sidi Driss is kind of a pilgrimage site for Star Wars fans. It’s an underground hotel that’s open year-round, and they even retained some of the set dressings from the films shot there.

Even the frescos that appear in the original film are still on the walls, although that took a bit of effort. The owners of the structure covered over the paintings with lime, but a fan named Philip Vanni vowed to return them to their former glory. In 1995, with the permission of the owners, he restored the original images.

Oh, by the way, that’s not the only underground structure in Matmata. The Berber people, who have lived here for centuries, still live in underground dwellings, although a few have moved to buildings on the surface.

6. Danny Larusso’s Apartment Complex in the Original “Karate Kid”

…is actually just an apartment complex in Reseda, California.

It looks exactly the same today as it did when it was featured in The Karate Kid more than 30 years ago.

This choice of set is a good example of why The Karate Kid was such a powerful film. It depicted a down-and-out kid in a down-and-out part of town finding his strength. The South Seas apartment complex at 19223 Saticoy Street conveys that struggle perfectly.

Of course, the producers could have built an identical facade of the apartment building on a studio lot, but that has a couple of downsides: It’s expensive, and audiences can sense something amiss in fake buildings.

“You can tell when something is on location. It feels real,” Levinson tells FashionBeans. “That reality, that pulls on people’s hearts.”

7. The RR Cafe From “Twin Peaks”

…is a real cafe called Twede’s.

You can find it in the town of North Bend, Washington.

Diners can munch on traditional cafe fare, but who are we kidding? You’re there for the pie and coffee that’s black as midnight on a moonless night. It’s okay; the staff at Twede’s know that. They even sell mugs emblazoned with Agent Dale Cooper’s go-to meal, “Cherry pie and a damn fine cup of coffee.”

In 2017, David Lynch returned to the director’s chair for a continuation of Twin Peaks on Showtime. The 18 episodes were a well-received gift for David Lynch fans, but it was also quite a blessing for Twede’s. The show’s producers paid to restore the diner’s interior to match footage from the original show. The cafe’s management plans to keep the changes in place, making the diner a mecca for fans of the show.

Oh, and you don’t have to go all the way to Washington state to enjoy what Twede’s calls their famous “Twin Peaks Cherry Pie.” You can order a whole pie to be shipped anywhere in the United States.

Order one here (or attend Twede’s pie-eating contest if you’re really hungry).

8. The Ghostbusters’ Headquarters From the Triginal “Ghostbusters” Films

…is a functioning New York City firehouse called Hook & Ladder 8.

This building in the Tribeca neighborhood of Manhattan dates back to 1903. It was a firehouse then, and a firehouse it remains—except, of course, when it’s pressed into duty for the filming of a new Ghostbusters movie.

The iconic exterior was featured in the original Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II. It also had a hilarious cameo in the 2016 reboot: The team first falls in love with the space as a headquarters for their burgeoning paranormal research company. Then they learn the price tag. The rent is more than $20,000 a month, so they demur.

It’s a pretty funny moment, especially for the genre of real estate humor. The 1980s were truly a different era — especially for Manhattan office space prices.

9. The Office in “The Office”

…is actually located in Los Angeles, California, in the neighborhood of Van Nuys.

It’s the headquarters of a studio building called Chandler Valley Center Studios.

This is the nice thing about filming a show that centers on an office building: The location hunting couldn’t be easier. All the set dressers had to do was throw up a few “Scranton Industrial Park” and “Dunder Mifflin” signs and they were good to go.

Meanwhile, the production team at Game of Thrones is kicking themselves, all, “Why didn’t we think of that?”