Future Hunters - Robert Patrick (1986) - Mody Road, Kowloon

It appears that the pair will be staying at the Holiday Inn Golden Mile because our final location for this film sees the taxi driving across Mody Road from Bristol Avenue, and into the aforementioned hotel. This is where the Hong Kong sojourn ends because the next scene involves Patrick and Bruce Le going to a pagoda to meet Silverfox (Hwang Jang Lee) but those scenes appear to have been shot in Manila.

Future Hunters - Robert Patrick (1986) - Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

After being picked up from the airport, the guys catch a cab to their hotel and the next location sees them driving along Salisbury Road with both the Coliseum and the (now demolished) International Mail Centre.

Future Hunters - Robert Patrick (1986) - Kai Tak Airport, Kowloon

It's come to that time again when I have to start scraping the very bottom of the barrel and figured one of the worst films I've ever seen is probably due an outing on the blog. Granted, the film was 'supposedly' written by J.Lee Thompson (the man who directed classics such as Ice Cold in Alex, The Guns of Navarone, Cape Fear, and was kicked out of Hong Kong with Gregory Peck in 1969 as they were trying to make The Chairman) and stars Robert Patrick and Richard Norton (neither a stranger to making films in Hong Kong - Patrick was featured previously here in Hong Kong '97 and Richard Norton has a long pedigree in Hong Kong film and also had a brief cameo in Forced Vengeance) but it doesn't change the fact that the film is a big bag (and 100 mins) o' shite.

Anyway, the plot involves Richard Norton being transferred into the future (I think) with the tip of the spear that killed Christ, and his need to get the artifact to a Professor Hightower (although it doesn't explain how he knows him) before the Nazis do. Patrick and his girlfriend fly to Hong Kong in search of Hightower but then end up having to go to the Philippines where they run away from Nazis, stumble across a tribe of pygmies, partake in some extreme low-budget special effects and then..well, I can't remember because I got bored. Its one highlight is a brief cameo from Korean superkicker, Hwang Jang Lee.

The screen caps here are fairly low quality because I haven't been able to secure a physical copy of the film and ended up taking the screencaps from a version uploaded to DailyMotion.com (see link here), so if anyone knows of a proper release, please let me know so I can do my bit and pay for it.

So, the Hong Kong scenes start with the usual arrival at Kai Tak where the pair are met by Patrick's local friend, played by Bruce Le.

They Call Her Cleopatra Wong - Marrie Lee (1978) - King's Park High Level Service Reservoir Playground, Ho Man Tin

The final location for this film. After Cleo is spotted spying on the timber yard, she is chased up some nearby steps that lead to the King's Park High Level Service Reservoir Playground. The steps are still there, pretty much unchanged, although the covered reservoir, like many others in Hong Kong, has been landscaped to provide some leisure facilities for the local populace. She then proceeds to beat up all of her attackers, the last one being kicked to his death off the edge of the hillside. It's likely that this is also the location where the view of Chatham Road North was filmed from.

They Call Her Cleopatra Wong - Marrie Lee (1978) - Chung Yee Street, Ho Man Tin

The truck carrying the illicit cases of strawberry jam stops are a small timber yard at the top of a dead end. The dead end is still around and it is at the end of Chung Yee Street in Ho Man Tin. As the vehicles drive up the road, you can see the long low block of Kar Man House in the Oi Man Estate at the bottom of the road. The building at the back of the dead end would have been part of the old Valley Road Estate, since replaced by a private residential development called "Ultima".

They Call Her Cleopatra Wong - Marrie Lee (1978) - Chatham Road North, Hung Hom

As the truck carrying the illicit goods (strawberry jams jars packed with forged currency) makes its way towards its destination, Cleo follows behind in a taxi and we are treated to this view of the Hung Hom Interchange from either the King's Park High Level Service Reservoir (we shall come to that place separately in a couple of posts) or Chung Hau Street. For a comparison view taken some ten or eleven years later, you can see these screencaps from an episode of Yellowthread Street (posted way back in 2014).

Of course this area has changed vastly since then, and most recently with the opening of Ho Man Tin MTR station at the bottom of the hill where the camera is placed. Although the older tenement buildings seen in the last captures are still around for now. Here is a panorama I stitched together. It looks a bit messy because the camera pans down to the left as the truck goes by.

They Call Her Cleopatra Wong - Marrie Lee (1978) - Connaught Road

Cleo gets into a cab to follow the strawberry jam truck as it heads away from the dockside. As the taxi follows the truck we get a couple of shots taken along Connaught Road. The first image shows the Rumsey Street carpark on the left, so we know that it was taken not far from the dock where the previous scene was shot. This is followed up in the next shot with a view looking back the other way along Connaught Road with Jardine House (the ex-Connaught Centre) on the right and Union House on the left - joined by the still-around pedestrian walkway that links both side of the road. Surprisingly there's still a few of those buildings around along that part of the road.

They Call Her Cleopatra Wong - Marrie Lee (1978) - Sheung Wan Waterfront, Hong Kong

Cleopatra heads over to a working dock area where she has been given a tip off about some illicit strawberry jam. It turns out the fake money, or at least the Hong Kong dollars part of it, is being smuggled into Hong Kong via jam jars. She goes to meet her informant at the waterside. A couple of the background buildings, sitting along Connaught Road, are still around so it allows us to see that this particular stretch of waterfront was located between Queen's Street and Sutherland Street. The exact location of the truck would be somewhere around the southern edge of the soccer pitch at the east end of Sun Yat Sen Memorial Park today.

They Call Her Cleopatra Wong - Marrie Lee (1978) - Victoria Harbour

To be honest this next shot would be better in HD, so I will keep my eyes peeled for one in the future. In the meantime it's a shot looking east through the harbour as Cleo rides atop a junk. The camera zooms in and in the background appears to be what I think might be the old Ko Chiu Road Housing Estate over in Yau Tong in East Kowloon.

They Call Her Cleopatra Wong - Marrie Lee (1978) - View of the Harbour

Next up is a Filipino/Singaporean co-production that filmed in the Philippines, Singapore and Hong Kong. Although the Hong Kong scenes are brief, at least the lead actor, Marrie Lee, was actually here rather than the film just being a bunch of stock footage establishing shots.

The premise is that Singapore's top female agent, Cleopatra Wong, is called back from her holiday in Manila to deal with a counterfeit money organisation that seeks to release forged money into the economies of the various ASEAN members. So she infiltrates the gang to find their secrets before heading off to Hong Kong and then finally back to the Philippines for the film's finale involving men dressed as nuns sporting assault rifles.

The opening Hong Kong scene is the usual view of the harbour from the Peak area, panning across Wanchai. Note the top of the old AIA building in the first image. This has recently been demolished I understand (remember, I have been stuck in the UK for almost 6 months so haven't had a chance to see what is still standing since the pandemic struck).

Or for those who would like to see all these images stitched together, here is a reasonable attempt courtesy of Autostitch.

Visa to Canton - Richard Basehart (1960) - Queen's Road East, Wanchai

I think the final image for this film will have to be this nice colour footage of Queen's Road East. The camera pans from left to right at the junction with Wanchai Road. If you look carefully you can just about see one of the streamline moderne "fins" of the Art Deco Wanchai Market building at the very right of the last frame. The market area, surrounded by those glorious painted wall adverts, is where block 2 of "The Zenith" now stands.

For those who would prefer a nicely stitched panorama of these three images, here is one for your viewing pleasure (click on it for a better view).

Visa to Canton - Richard Basehart (1960) - Double Happiness Restaurant, Johnston Road

Don Benton (Richard Basehart) travels to Macau to investigate the mysterious passengers who were on board Jimmy's plane when they were shot down. Jimmy escaped but the American passengers, supposedly spies, were taken away by the Chinese. We are shown a brief clip of a ferry plying the waters between Hong Kong and Macau, however, the footage used is in fact a small clip from the previous year's Ferry to Hong Kong, complete with that big fake looking paddle steamer they cobbled together for that film.

So Benton heads to a casino where he knows a nefarious gangster, purportedly behind the kidnappings, is having a flutter, but the establishing shot for the casino is actually an image of a popular local restaurant that used to stand on the west corner of Tai Yuen Street and Johnston Road. It was called the "Double Happiness Restaurant" (雙喜大茶樓) and was around for a while before being replaced (circa 2001) by a residential building that took the same name (雙喜樓). I'm not sure how long before its demolition the restaurant was still operational.