Florida may be the only state where everything largely depends on the willing suspension of disbelief.

I'm not just talking about theme park fantasy factories along Interstate 4. I'm talking about all the developers who tout retention pond lots as "lakefront," the Ponzi schemers who assure suckers that they're making a sound investment and the government officials who promise the public that nothing bad could happen from building homes in areas known for flooding.

Perhaps that's why Florida has been so popular with the dream merchants of Hollywood — both the one in California and the one here.

Right now the annual Florida Film Festival is going on in Orlando, which according to the Orlando Weekly "includes roughly 40 films with some form of Florida connection."

A couple of recent entries in the Florida film catalog have drawn raves. Moonlight, set in Miami, won the Oscar for best picture (after a mix-up involving a Florida-born actress, Faye Dunaway of Two Egg). Meanwhile The Florida Project, filmed near Disney World, won awards from the National Society of Film Critics and the New York Film Critics' Circle.

The Sunshine State has been grabbing the spotlight in movies for decades. The Marx Brothers' first film was 1929's The Cocoanuts, in which Groucho played a Florida real estate hustler willing to promise anything to win over customers.

"Florida, folks, land of perpetual sunshine," he crows at one point. "Let's get the auction started before we have a tornado." He also says, "You can have any kind of a home you want. You can even get stucco. Oh, how you can get stuck-o!"

In Orson Welles' 1941 masterpiece Citizen Kane, the media mogul's palatial pleasure dome Xanadu was supposedly located in Florida, so he could take his sycophants picnicking in the Everglades. However, it seems unrealistic that the picnic scene does not show any of actors being carried away by mosquitoes the size of a DC-3. Sure enough, those scenes were filmed on Long Island.

Unlike Kane, parts of the 1948 hit Key Largo really were filmed in the Florida Keys — tiny parts, namely the exterior shots from the beginning and end of the film. Yet people in Key Largo are so proud of being featured in a Humphrey Bogart movie that there's a display there of the boat The African Queen, from a completely different Bogart movie. No, I don't know why a boat from a different movie is on display. But it is "available for daily canal cruises and dinner cruises in the Port Largo Canal area and also for private events," according to its web site.

The Yearling (1946) was filmed near Silver Glenn Springs in the Ocala National Forest, thanks to the novel's author, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, who gave the movie's director strict instructions on how to make everything look authentic. Although the sets are gone, you can still hike "The Yearling Trail" through the forest and visit the locations that inspired Rawlings' novel.

One of the best Elvis movies, Follow That Dream, was shot mostly in Ocala and Yankeetown, with the hilarious courtroom showdown shot in the Citrus County Courthouse in Inverness. Tom Petty's uncle worked on the movie crew and brought his nephew to meet Elvis. Seeing the King drive up in a shiny Cadillac and make all the women in the crowd swoon convinced young Tom that he wanted to be a rock'n'roller too.

Elvis' visit paid another dividend: When the Citrus County Historical Society needed a grant to restore the old courthouse, they used stills from the movie to show what it used to look like. If you visit the restored courthouse today, you'll see a cardboard Elvis on every floor.

Another fabulous Florida movie that was filmed here was the steamy 1981 neo-noir Body Heat, starring William Hurt and Kathleen Turner as sweaty lovers who plot her husband's demise. The perspiration might seem authentic, but it's more fakery. The movie was filmed in Palm Beach County during a cold snap, so the actors had to be sprayed with water before each scene so they'd have that drenched-with-sweat look. Presumably they were then chipped out of the ice and allowed to thaw between takes.

One of my favorite Florida movies is John Sayles' 2002 indie flick Sunshine State, filmed entirely on Amelia Island with an ensemble cast that includes St. Petersburg's own Angela Bassett. The best part is Alan King's monologue about how golf courses are just "nature on a leash." The movie's only flaw is the badly miscast Edie Falco playing a former Weeki Wachee mermaid. Her attempt at a Cracker accent makes her sound like Carmela Soprano gargling cornbread.

Some other beloved movies were filmed in Florida, but you might not realize it. The 1980 Chevy Chase-Bill Murray comedy Caddyshack, for instance, was shot at country clubs and golf courses in Davie and Boca Raton. Sergio Leone's sprawling gangster epic Once Upon A Time in America used the Don Cesar Resort on St. Pete Beach as a stand-in for 1920s Miami Beach. Tim Burton's surreal 1990 comedy Edward Scissorhands was mostly filmed in the Carpenters Run subdivision in Lutz. Sadly all the extravagant topiary was fake.

Not every Florida film is a classic. The underwater scenes in The Creature from the Black Lagoon — or as I like to call it, the prequel to The Shape of Water – were shot in Wakulla Springs, while its sequel Revenge of the Creature was shot in Silver Springs. The most famous X-rated movie of all time, Deep Throat, was shot at a mansion in Coconut Grove. Horror schlockmeister Herschel Gordon Lewis took over the town of St. Cloud to film his splatterfest Two Thousand Maniacs! – and put just about everyone in town in the movie.

The Hollywood hotshots aren't always on the ball when it comes to my favorite state, though. I am stunned and dismayed to report that the recent release Hurricane Heist was NOT set in the state that gets hit by more hurricanes than any other. I haven't been this disappointed since I found out Snakes on a Plane didn't involve pythons from the Everglades.

Contact Craig Pittman at craig@tampabay.com. Follow @craigtimes.