Monday, January 27, 2014

Men of the Dragon - Jared Martin (1974) - Repulse Bay Hotel, Hong Kong

One of the nice surprises about the locations on this film is finding some footage of the old, original, Repulse Bay Hotel.

Sadly, this hotel was demolished in 1982 to make way for the not so great 'hole-in-the-middle' Repulse bay apartments. Later on a replica of the hotel was built as a mall - The Repulse Bay Arcade. I'd heard rumours it was a scaled down version of the older building, but someone involved in the rebuild commented (on Gwulo.com) that the front of the replica was built at the same scale.

Built in the 1920's, it saw many famous visitors over the years before becoming a focus of bitter fighting between allied defenders and Japanese invaders in December 1941. The Japanese renamed the hotel during their occupation and called it the "Midorigahama" until they surrendered in 1945. I also heard from Chaplin Chang that the hotel was popular with the cast and crew of Enter the Dragon during breaks from filming around the corner in Tai Tam Bay.

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