Soldier of Fortune - Clark Gable (1955) - Cheung Sha Wan Boatyard, Kowloon

Despite me covering most of the locations from Soldier of Fortune some years ago (I did a post over on Gwulo back in 2009 which served as a sort of precursor to the establishment of this blog), there are still a couple of places that had defied pinpointing. One of the locations is a fairly innocuous street scene, but the other was a local boat yard to which Michael Rennie - in his role as the Marine Police Inspector, Merryweather - visits just prior to him getting stuck on board Hank Lee's adventure-bound fishing junk.

The scene is quite interesting because it looks like a real event going on (as opposed to being staged for the film) as a new boat is launched from its dry dock into the nearby water. The only problem I was having is the exact location as to where this may have been filmed.

It's taken a while but I have finally managed to pinpoint it to one of the local boatyards that operated along the pre-reclamation waterfront where Cheung Sha Wan becomes Lai Chi Kok. The key to the location was a familiar looking ridge line that I couldn't place until it dawned on me that I was looking at Lion Rock from the west.

Anyway, after consulting some aerial images from 1949 and 1959 it appears that the location for this particular local ship yard was at the very southern end of Hing Wah Street and this location tallies with the current location of Sham Shui Po Sports ground. The NW corner of the track to be precise.

Hugh farmer's Industrial History of Hong Kong has an article on ship breaking in the area and one of the images contains a similar angle of Lion Rock in the background, albeit slightly more south because it looks as though the ship building activities were along the south west facing Cheung Sha Wan waterfront area, whereas the ship breaking industry discussed in Hugh's article appears to have taken place along the south eastern facing section, essentially the space now occupied by Lai Chi Kok MTR station.

In the penultimate image above the actor, Michael Rennie (playing Merryweather), has moved his head and you can see Lion Rock poking out from behind the distant ridge line. The derrick in the background of the last shot is the landmark that can be discerned on aerial imagery and helped me pinpoint the location.

Love is a Many-Splendored Thing - William Holden (1955) - 10 Po Shan Road, Midlevels

I (and many others) have been wondering where this particular building was located for several years. Ever since we first started looking at the movie locations on Gwulo back in 2009 (wow, 11 years ago already!) this has been a location I have been itching to pinpoint but simply lacked the resources at the time. For those of you wondering which place in the film I am referring to, it is the building exterior used as the establishing shot for the dinner party that Suyin gets invited to and where she first meets Mark Elliot. Here is the reminder.

So you can see from the screen caps that the property appears to be built on a podium and the garden balustrade extends into the distance to the hill in the background. The driveway obviously reaches the podium via a slope but it's not clear how steep or curved it may be. The house itself has this very large and ornate stucco portico with columns and you can see behind the property part of a retaining wall where the hillside has been cut out to accommodate the building. The balustrade closest to the camera on the left is also angled away from the top of the drive.

I initially thought this might be one of the large mansions on Conduit Road close to the Fairview, but no matter how much I looked there was really nothing that quite fitted. Anyway, after a few weeks of sifting through image after image I finally found a photo on Gwulo that had a property on it that looked like a possible match. It didn't take long to find some aerial photos that confirmed the shape of the podium (the extended garden area, loped driveway and angled balustrade etc) and 10 Po Shan Road was finally identified.

I have no idea whether or not this building's address was indeed #10 but seeing as #8 is next door and block 1 of the current building Po Shan Mansions includes #10 and #12 then I don't see it as too flimsy an assumption.

So what happened to the building? The truth is I won't know until I get my hands on the land deeds but from the aerial images the building was still around in 1959 but by 1963 had been removed, leaving only the podium. This makes sense because po Shan Mansions was completed in 1965 and the current building stands on the old podium with a few changes.

The building itself was replaced by Block B of Po Shan Mansions whereas Block A was built on what used to be the garden section. The old front driveway was filled with concrete and a new driveway constructed that led around the eastern end of the podium to the rear of the property. However, if you go and visit Po Shan Road you can see from the roadside that the old bricks that formed the slope of the original driveway are still visible...to the extent that you can see how they filled up the old driveway space with concrete. (if you have Google Chrome then you can view it here). Other than that the podium retains much of its old shape and you can even see the angle at the front that I mentioned above, where the driveway met the podium level.

Anyway, I'll leave you with this stitch of the screen caps to give you a better idea of how the place once looked.

Foxbat - Henry Silva (1977) - Bonham Strand Public Latrine, Sheung Wan

Here's another one pulled from the recent bluray review. The scene when A-Cheung gets out of the car and hides in a toilet was filmed along Bonham Strand. For anyone familiar with the area where Bonham Strand meets Morrison Street and Wing Lok Street there is now a triangular paved area (the paving stones make up a large compass face on the ground) that is marked on maps as a rest garden. Wing Lok Street is now split into two by this rest garden, but back in 1977 it was a continuous road and the triangular island formed between the three roads hosted the toilet block that can be seen in the film. I tried to find out when it was built but could only find a mention in a 1941 public works document asking for tenders.

Anyway, as you can see on the screen caps it was constructed in a sort of streamline moderne/art deco style of building. When was it demolished? I'm not sure but it is perhaps worth mentioning that sometime in the early 80's the old south block of Western market, which used to stand on the southern part of Bonham Strand here, was demolished to make way for the ugly carbuncle that goes by the name of the Sheung Wan Municipal Services Building. So perhaps the toilet block was demolished at the same time and the area remodelled to its current configuration? If anybody can give me more accurate dates or events I would appreciate it.

The top image below is looking from east to west along Bonham Strand. Morrison Street is running left to right immediately behind the car. As you can see the toilet block behind the car consisted of a single storey and double storey part. Maybe the upper part was a bath house? This is quite a common thing for toilets in HK (not that I spend much time hanging around them I hasten to add...)

 Front of the low block, you can see the Bonham Strand street sign.

The above image shows the view looking north up Morrison Street, where the car is. The actor who plays A-Cheung (Yi Lui - 伊雷) is walking along Bonham Strand and in the background behind the car you can see a no right turn sign on Wing Lok Street. Wing Lok Street at the time continued behind the toilet block, but that part is now part of the rest garden.

Finally, the last shot below shows us looking back the other way up Morrison Street with the toilet block on the right. The brightly lit shop in the background was the "Kam Yuen Store". It occupied the ground floor of a building that still stands on the corner of Bonham Strand and Morrison Street. The current occupant of that space - at least the last time I was there - is a branch of Rich Harvest, a real estate agent. The ramshackle hoardings on the left are where Harmony Court now stands.

Foxbat - Henry Silva (1977) - Guildford Road, The Peak

This location should really have been included with this earlier post because that ost includes the viewpoint from the car parked on Guildford Road. I think at the time I was confused about the location of the fashion designer's house and neglected to see the link.

Anyway, as I have already outlined, the fashion designer's house has been tricky to find because the establishing shots were filmed on Craigmin Road, the exterior scenes were shot at Repulse Bay Road
and it appears that the interior party/dinner scenes may have been another place entirely due to the different shaped windows of the house for all the interior scenes.

This leads me to believe that they may have, possibly, been filmed at an old property called "Farnborough", once located at #1 Barker Road. It is one of the two properties that can be partially seen in my first link above and is the viewpoint from which the following screencaps were taken.

Gwulo.com mentions that this building was the original location of the German Swiss International School from 1975, so perhaps there are some alumni of this building that can remember if a film company used it for any extended period of time? Suffice to say it has since been demolished and redeveloped.

Foxbat - Henry Silva (1977) - Magazine Gap, The Peak

About a year ago I put up this post for Black Cobra Woman and it was an establishing shot used in the film for the residence of Jack Palance and his brother (played by Gabriele Tinti). The bluray version of Foxbat has scene that I don't recall from the dvd release. It's a quick shot from almost the same angle/position as the Black Cobra Woman one as Henry Silva's car drives down Peak Road towards Magazine Gap Road.

The large property on the corner is/was #40 Peak Road and as the camera pans to the right towards the harbour we can also see Katoomba in the last three screencaps.

Foxbat - Henry Silva (1977) - Former 36 Repulse Bay Road, Deepwater Bay

So, during the COVID19 lock down (though HK hasn't been as locked down as the UK) I have been re-looking at Foxbat (last covered back in 2017) courtesy of the bluray version. The additional resolution has allowed me to find a few more previously unidentified places, and this location was a real stumper.

Recall that in the film this property is supposed to be located at the top of Craigmin Road on the Peak because all the shots of people and cars approaching the property were filmed there. However, that was most definitely a red herring because it turns out this property was in fact located on the headland that sits between Deepwater Bay and Repulse Bay.

It's a great looking property and I haven't bothered investigating when it was built but suffice to say it has since been demolished and turned into a small collection of luxury houses, collectively called "Sunbeam", at 36 Repulse Bay Road.

If anyone can tell me who used to live here or anything else interesting about the place, please feel free to leave a comment or email me.

Les Nuits Rouges du Bourreau de Jade - Carrie Ng (2010) - #30 Po Shan Road, Midlevels

The last post for this film, Les Nuits Rouges du Bourreau de Jade, is a nice one for me because it involves one of my favourite Hong Kong buildings, long since sadly demolished. The house may be gone but it's memory is etched into the rather bloody finale of the film as Carrie takes on all comers with her removable killing finger nails.

Those who follow this blog, and perhaps Asian films in general, will remember this location as the house where Tang Wei and her dissident cohorts hole up in an effort to get close to Tony Leung's Japanese collaborating official in Ang Lee's Lust, Caution. It is the old art deco mansion at 30 Po Shan Road. In Les Nuits Rouges du Bourreau de Jade though we get to see significantly more of the property as the end sequence is shot throughout the building and includes a few scenes on the rooftop. Suffice to say this post is a bit more heavy on the screencaps than I would usually allow.

The final scene of the film shows Carrie walking off into the woods as the police turn up to clean up her mess. I believe this public pathway is the one that sneaky movie fans can go down to catch a glimpse of the old hillside terracing behind Realty Gardens that used to be part of the old Mok Villa and were featured in Love is a Many-Splendored Thing.

Les Nuits Rouges du Bourreau de Jade - Carrie Ng (2010) - Lido Beach, Tsuen Wan

This is the beach location where Catherine goes to meet the Chinese gangsters after she fails to retrieve the jade skull and the poison within it, after losing it to Carrie. There is an earlier scene which utilised the same location and involves a phone call between the two and during that scene (top image) you can see the Ting Kau Bridge behind him. The later scene is when they meet again face to face and the camera takes in more of the general area (lower images) encompassing Tsing Yi Island and Tsing Ma Bridge in the background.

Above: Ting Kau Bridge from an earlier scene

Les Nuits Rouges du Bourreau de Jade - Carrie Ng (2010) - Why Club, Minden Avenue

The venue for the launch of Carrie's perfume venture (Red Nights) is a, now defunct, club in Tsim Sha Tsui called the "Why Club". It was located in the Harbour Pinnacle Building at #8 Minden Avenue. I'm not sure when it closed but it was definitely still open in 2014 when there was a gang fight outside.

Les Nuits Rouges du Bourreau de Jade - Carrie Ng (2010) - Horizon Plaza, Ap Lei Chau

The rooftop of Horizon Plaza - well known locally amongst the shoppers of Hong Kong as being an industrial building packed floor after floor of various fashion, furniture and other outlets - serves as the location for the first meeting between Catherine and the Chinese gangsters who are also after the jade skull and its poisonous contents. The sequence involves a rather nice panning shot that takes in much of the area to the south of Ap Lei Chau.

Les Nuits Rouges du Bourreau de Jade - Carrie Ng (2010) - Maidstone Road, To Kwa Wan

After being given details of how to make contact with her buyer, Catherine heads to a factory building (id not done yet) and is then shot and the merchandise is stolen by Carrie Ng's character. Catherine stumbles out of the building and onto a street and manages to identify the culprit by recognising the shoes that were outside the room. Although I haven't yet identified the factory building, it most definitely was/is not next to Maidstone Road in To Kwa Wan which is where the subsequent street scene was filmed.