Thursday, March 25, 2021

Visa to Canton - Richard Basehart (1960) - View from the Peak

Unbelievably, to me at least, I have stumbled upon yet another 60's era film that, although shot at Bray studios in Windsor, used proper location footage shot in Hong Kong for its various establishing shots. The film is Visa to Canton (a.k.a Passport to China) and is a Hammer Film production directed by Michael Carreras (who also directed another Hammer Hong Kong film: Shatter). According to various Hammer histories, the film was shot as a pilot for an intended US TV series followup that never happened. Perhaps the lukewarm reception of Hong Kong, shot the same year, turned the US execs off?

The plot is simple enough. Richard Basehart plays Don Benton, a former US pilot who has set up in Hong Kong after the war to run a travel agency. His adoptive family, headed by Mrs Mao (Athene Saylor in, sadly, 'yellowface'), ask him to help rescue their Kuomintang pilot son Jimmy (Burt Kwouk), who has been shot down in Mainland China.

Principal photography was done in June 1960 at Bray, but I can't find any mention of when or who shot the Hong Kong footage. The film was given a December release in the UK that year and, perhaps due to its reception, was released in cheaper black and white only format in the US a few months later.

It has some nice colour imagery of Hong Kong but starts with this nice panning shot looking over Wanchai from the Peak.

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