Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Foxbat - Henry Silva (1977) - Harbour Drive, Wanchai

Not strictly Harbour Drive, but the end part of the car chase culminates in the newly reclaimed section of the Wanchai waterfront that now houses buildings such as the China Resources Building, Sun Hung Kai Centre and the nearby Wanchai Sports Ground.

For example, in the first picture we can see the bus continuing along Marsh Road towards this area that is still obviously a very young construction site.


The finale involves Philip Chen (who also happened to co-write the film) crashing his car through the top of the bus and the following two pictures show where it happens.


I initially though the low building with the open front was the old Wanchai Police Station, but it turns out we are looking a bit further to the east. The cream building (in the DVD screencap you can clearly see a Citizen advert on it) is actually still around (although I think the advert has long gone) and it is the City Centre Building/City Mansion (the name depends on whether you are looking at Google Maps or Centamap) that sits on the corner of Stewart Road (the music company Tom Lee currently occupy the first two floors). That means we are looking down Stewart Road in the second picture.

So the low rise building was actually the pre-cursor to the current AXA Centre. I can't find any information about it so can only assume it was just a row of shophouses like the ones that can be seen on the other side of Stewart Road. Anyway, it must have been knocked down not long after because the AXA Centre was built in 1982.

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