Summons to Death - Tang Ching (1967) - Hotel Merlin, Middle Road

A fourth pirate brother, Cheung Biu (Huang Tsung-hsun), is responsible for killing all of his fellow pirates for the treasure map and, in a bit of pre-Mission Impossible face swapping, Tang Lui creates a mask of him so he can access his hotel room in town. The hotel in question was the Hotel Merlin located on the corner of Hankow and Middle Roads. This is where the Kowloon Hotel now stands although the Kowloon Hotel takes up the space once occupied by both the Hotel Merlin and the Peninsula Court Hotel. The hotel has appeared briefly on the blog before, although in name only, see the bottom images on this post.

I do remember Chaplin Chang telling me many years ago that Hotel Merlin was where the production offices were based for the filming of Lord Jim whilst the crew were in town for the HK-based scenes.

Summons to Death - Tang Ching (1967) - Lobster Bay, Sai Kung

Mei-Li and Tang Lui agree to meet Poon at Lobster Bay to formulate a plan to get back at Ma Loong. This is a section of Lobster Bay that is now fairly difficult to reach due to general growth of foliage and the construction of the riding stables. I did some coasteering here about ten years ago, but sadly my only pictures of this section are looking in rather than looking out (see lower image). In my more 'recent' image (actually snapped in July 2015) the area we see the actors arriving in the top image is the foliage covered area behind the beach.

Summons to Death - Tang Ching (1967) - Long Ke Wan, Sai Kung

In an attemtped execution - in line with the best of Bond (i.e. anything other than just shooting someone dead) - Tung Lui and Mei-Li are knocked unconscious and wake up inside a sealed wooden box that has been left for the high tide to drown them. They must act quickly to survive and end up rolling the box with the incoming waves. This was all filmed on the (still) beautiful beach of Long Ke Wan. It's a traipse to get to even now, despite more modern transport links, so I imagine in 1967 this involved a boat ride from Port Shelter. Funnily enough, we've seen this location before on the blog when it stood in for the Italian riviera in The Million Eyes of Sumuru.

Summons to Death - Tang Ching (1967) - Hillside Villa, 11 Fei Ngo Shan Road

We were here not so long ago in the other Tang Ching film: Inter-Pol. I won't repeat myself here but in this movie the property is owned by pirate brother Poon and he lets Mei-Li stay here. It's where Tang Lui (Tang Ching) goes to meet her to exchange his part of the treasure map.

Summons to Death - Tang Ching (1967) - Tai Po Road Lookout, Tai Po Road

After evading the cops, pirate brother Poon (Ku Feng) runs down onto Tai Po Road and is met by another of his former pirate brothers, Ma Loong (Chiang Kuang-chao). As the car turns around it drives back towards Kowloon past a pavilion. This is the Tai Po Road Lookout and the pavilion is still there - although the lookout's view is perhaps not as expansive as it was back in the late 60s.

Summons to Death - Tang Ching (1967) - View from Fei Ngo Shan Road

Poon escapes the police at Shatin Inn and, all of a sudden, is above Kowloon near to Fei Ngo Shan Road. The large hill in the middle image is the "Diamond Hill" that the area is named after. The hill is long gone having been excavated and the area was turned into the Fung Tak Estate and adjacent Po Kong Village Road Park (there's a great bike track there for anyone interested). People always ask me where the hill is in Diamond Hill and, well, that's where it was.

Bill Lake - new autobiography just released.

Some of you may recall a video interview with Bill Lake that I helped arrange a few years back. The interview was conducted by Arnaud Lanuque for his House of Asian Cinema Youtube channel (and to add to his vast archive of Hong Kong and other Asian film actor interviews).

One of the upshots of this was that Bill felt it was time to put it all down into written form and the result has just been released on Amazon.com. So please go ahead and grab a copy if you are a fan of 70s and 80s cinema. The book details Bill's upbringing in the UK and his career as a gunner in the Royal Artillery - the very vocation that led him to settle in Hong Kong. These days Bill is one of the foremost military historians in Hong Kong and South China, and it was our shared interest in this that led us to first meet via Gwulo.com. Go buy his book!

Summons to Death - Tang Ching (1967) - Shatin Inn, Tai Po Road

Head pirate, Gin Te-biu (Lo Wei) meets up with his old pirate chums and arranges to meet one of them at the Shatin Inn the next day. However, he has been double-crossed and the police turn up to arrest him.

Shatin Inn was apparently used in quite a few films over the years - it opened in 1955 and only recently closed down in September 2024 for reasons I will get into below. However, I've only ever seen it once previously on the blog and that was for a scene with Chow Yun Fat and Sylvia Chang in All About Ah Long.

We see the venue in its heyday below, when the Tai Po Road was the only way into the Shatin Valley from Kowloon, and all traffic on the road went by the Inn. It was famous for its satay sticks, but by the time I last went (about 10 years ago) it was quite expensive and way past its sell-by-date. One of the contributors to its downfall was the reconstruction of the road system here back in the early 2000s. The changes turned that part of the old Tai Po Road into the singular access road for Shatin Heights up in the hills. This meant most traffic was rerouted away from the restaurant's location unless it was heading up into the Shatin Heights residential area. No doubt the Covid restrictions imposed between 2020 and 2024 also had a major impact on the place's footfall.

The top image below shows the view across the Shatin valley from Tai Po Road. Sadly, the New Territories hasn't looked like this for a long time. You can see the most recent Streetview from the same place here but the tree growth prevents you from seeing the hundreds of highrises that have sprung up.

View from the rear of the restaurant

Summons to Death - Tang Ching (1967) - Port Shelter, Sai Kung

Back to the late 60s and another Tang Ching film, Summons to Death, where he plays a very similar character to the 009 he played in Inter-Pol the same year. In this film he is some sort of secret agent who inadvertantly gets involved in the hunt for a treasure map when he is approached in a night club by Mei-Li (Tina Chin Fei) in a case of mistaken identity. This one is written a directed by Lo Wei who also makes a briefish appearance as the leader of a group of pirates who come across half of a treasure map. He is captured by the police and entrusts his old pirate buddies to track down his long lost sister (Chin Fei) and get her to find the other half of the map.

The film starts with the origin of the map - the property of another gang of pirates who live on a rather extravagantly pimped out fishing junk. The pirate leader's girlfriend double crosses him and makes off with half of the map with her boyfriend just before Lo Wei and his gang arrive and find the other half.

The pimped out junk is afloat in the middle of Port Shelter in Sai Kung.

Pimp My Ride, HK junk style

Godzilla vs. Destroyah - Takuro Tatsumi (1995) - Nga Tsin Long Road , Kowloon City

I've been doing a bit of spring cleaning on my increasingly creaky desktop and found a couple of images from Godzilla vs Destroyah that I never made into a post. I have no idea if I forgot at the time or just didn't know where the location was. Anyway, after a quick look I can see that this shot was taken at the junction of Nga Tsin Wai Road and Nga Tsin Long Road. The giveaway in this case is the corner of the market building that can be seen on the right of the upper image. The older buildings are still there for the time being.