Wednesday, May 31, 2017

A Queen's Ransom - George Lazenby (1976) - 41 Cumberland Road, Kowloon Tong

Two houses are used in the film. One of them (yet to be located) is the hideaway where the criminals are holed up as they instigate various parts of their plan. The second house is the house where Tanny Tien Ni (last seen in this blog starring alongside Tamara Dobson in Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold) lives. This latter one is in fact 41 Cumberland Road aka Bruce Lee's old house in Kowloon Tong.

However, there is an odd bit of editing going on because in one scene where the criminals are all chilling out in their back garden and Yang Sze (aka Bolo Yeung) gets into a fight with Wang Yu. The fight starts off at the criminals house but then for some odd reason there is an edit and the fight continues but this time, and quite obviously for anyone familiar with Bruce Lee's old house, in the garden of 41 Cumberland Road. These are the screen grabs I've put up below - you can recognise the "Roman" wall frieze on the garden wall and the old Japanese bridge.

The fight then cuts back to the original house where the crew are staying. But Bruce's house pops up again as Charles Heung (yes, THAT Charles Heung) goes to visit Tanny under some some of protection detail. While he is there she gets a visit from the Wang Yu et al and Heung hides on the balcony. Again, all this was filmed on the first floor balcony of Bruce's house.


Believe it or not, those columns still exist but have been integrated into the house when it was concreted over into its current box shape. What a pity because it was a really nice looking house. Anyway, then we get a view down to the driveway from the balcony as well as a quick look inside the bedroom as Heung re-enters once the baddies have gone. You can just see the famous entrance gate through the gap between Heung and the screen door.


And finally, although I have no proof, I think this last shot shows the internal staircase. I guess this must have not been long after the place was bought by Yu Pang-lin.

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