I'm going to say the island sequences of the original
King Kong There's all these little details O'Brien put into the sets, like seeing birds fly through the air, or how you could see the snake beast actually swimming in the lake of Kong's lair.
The big artisitc influnce in Kong is Gustave Dore, a print maker best know for his illustrations for Dante's
Divine Comedy. You can really see that influence on the island scenes.