Saturday, February 20, 2016

Spider-Man: The Dragon's Challenge - Nicholas Hammond (1979) - Jumbo Floating Restaurant, Aberdeen

A significant proportion of filming took place on the famous Jumbo floating restaurant in Aberdeen Harbour. It seems to be the villain's favourite place to do business giving us some nice glimpses around Aberdeen as a whole.

I'll do a smaller Aberdeen post next, but I thought it was worth dedicating a single post to the Jumbo because I've never seen it used so much in a film before. Plus there is a neat stunt at the end when Spidey gets hit by a tranquiliser dart and takes a dive off the top of the restaurant into those rather disgusting Aberdeen Harbour waters.

It's also interesting to note that when this filming took place, the restaurant was actually positioned right next to the waterfront. Was it undergoing some sort of repair? Given that this (and the Tai Pak) usually sits on some rather hefty wooden piles (no, sorry kids, this restaurant doesn't normally 'float' at all) I doubt the position was at the request of the TV movie production company.

Some shots of the interior

Restaurant positioned along the Aberdeen Waterfront...but why?

And finally some shots around the roof - which went on to become a restaurant called Top Deck by Cafe Deco. It closed a few years ago but I don't know if anything replaced it. I almost made it there once but just before we arrived it started chucking it down with rain, so we cancelled. Not long after that it closed down...oh well. The following is a great shot taken from the roof showing, quite clearly, the old Police Station on the hillside at the back. Pretty much every film shot in Aberdeen has this building somewhere in the background.


And then Spidey gets shot and a rather brave stuntman takes the fall into the water.

Splash!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great article. Do you know who was that stuntman who doubled for Nicholas Hammond and took a high fall from the roof into the water ?

Phil said...

Thanks anon. Just click on the Spider man label at the bottom to pull up all the other related locations.

As you can see from this comment (https://hongkongandmacaufilmstuff.blogspot.hk/2016/03/spider-man-dragons-challenge-nicholas_5.html?showComment=1458375807700#c2476264600132359445) Hammonds stuntman was Fred Waugh but even he wasn't brave enough for the plunge into Aberdeen Harbour. It would be nice to find out who it was for some well deserved kudos.

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