Neil used to work as a production manager for Salon Films who were responsible for co-producing many of the films I have featured on this blog - including Bloodsport, Double Impact and many more. Basically, Neil was the location manager for these films and so he is probably the one single person in the world who can provide some great answers about the places used in them.
Anyway, one of the first things he identified was the Stanley Barracks (Stanley Fort as it was back then) used for the training scenes in Bloodsport, as well as the 'school' that the young Frank was bullied at. Here are the grabs.
Unfortunately, due to the fact that this facility is now occupied by the PLA (that's the Peoples' Liberation Army in case you didn't already know), and my usual resources (Streetview and Panoramio) don't have anything helpful I can't really provide any decent comparison for confirmation so we will just have to accept it as it is. The thing I can't do is provide an exact location within the compound - this will have to wait until some kind soul makes some more comprehensive pictures available. The PLA do host open days at various barracks, but I'm not sure if Stanley is included let alone whether non-Chinese (like me) would be allowed in.
Having said that, the building seen in the top two snaps does happen to have been snapped back in the 1960's courtesy of the Queens Royal Surrey Regiment who were stationed there at the time. I can't seem to do a direct embed of the picture so have copy and pasted it. For the sake of acknowledgement the website it can be found on is at the following URL (and is well worth a read): http://www.queensroyalsurreys.org.uk/hongkong_china/hkc10_1.html#
Look carefully and you will see it is the same building, albeit when they filmed Bloodsport the trees had grown (well, it was 25 or so years later). The soldiers above are basically standing/seated in the same spot that the guy is standing in in the second screen grab.
So, once again many thanks to Neil.
1 comment:
Thanks for clarifying this. I thought the U.S. Military base scenes were filmed at the Lei Yue Mun Barracks (now a holiday village, but more recently one of the first quarantine camps in Hong Kong for Covid-19 patients). The two places had similar-looking buildings.
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