Desperate Mission - Germán Cobos (1965) - More Kwun Tong Road

Back to Kwun Tong Road again, but this time we are a bit further to the north and west. The large building you can see on the left side of the road is the former Amoycan Industrial Centre. This building was constructed in 1961 and I guess was part of the Amoy canning factory (located behind it from this angle). In later years it became a mixture of enterprises including a self-storage business on the 3rd floor. This is signficant because just a few years ago (2016) a fire occurred in one of the storage units - one of the worst in many years - that ended up claiming the lives of two firemen. It may have been this that spurred the owner to redevelop the site. The building was demolished in 2019/2020 and a new high rise residential development called "The Aperture" has been built on the site. Same view today (I kid you not).

Desperate Mission - Germán Cobos (1965) - Olympic Avenue, To Kwa Wan

Next up we see the vehicles heading down Olympic Avenue. It can be a bit laborious poring over a mid-60s, black and white aerial map of Hong Kong to find a specific bend in a road but sometimes it pays off. Had my Chinese been any better I may have been able to decipher the blurry red characters on the white building on the left, but as it is I did it the hard way.

Anyway, this is the corner of Olympic Avenue as it turns east onto Sung Wong Toi Road, just past the Sung Wong Toi Garden. The white building is marked on the older maps as a "seasoning factory", but a little digging turned up the name of the Tien Chu Chemical factory. The company is famous for its MSG products as well as other things. The part of the building we can see below was the cold storage facility at 72 Pak Tai Street, but the factory compound was massive (200,000 sq ft) and encompassed a whole block that has since been filled by the "Sky Tower"residential development.

Desperate Mission - Germán Cobos (1965) - Kwun Tong Road, Kwun Tong

One of the roads we see during the vehicle chase is the Kwun Tong Road, although at the time of filming is was a fairly new road and development alongside it was still limited. The view of the road is very similar to this one filmed the following year for Asia-Pol Secret Service, although I think the images below were probably filmed slightly further east, but not much.

There's actually a few more images of different sections of Kwun Tong Road that I will share but will do so in a later post.

Desperate Mission - Germán Cobos (1965) - More Kai Tak Airport

I thought the airport scene was worthy of two posts because as Z-55 arrives at Hong Kong he is framed for smuggling precious jewels and has to do a runner from the local police. So he steals a truck and drives away from the airport. The sequence is a mixture of sound stage set (jumping out of the police office window) and on-location footage.

Checkout the VW vans for the hotels. The August Moon Hotel was a real hotel on Kimberley Road in TST. I wonder if this is the same vehicle?

Shuttle bus for the August Moon Hotel on the right

Desperate Mission - Germán Cobos (1965) - Kai Tak Airport

Kai Tak Airport is a consistent favourite on this blog. On the old version of the blog it was the Kai Tak posts that always did well and the same is true with this current version. So here we are with another as Z-55's plane comes in to land.

The Kai Tak Observation Deck

Desperate Mission - Germán Cobos (1965) - Connaught Road Central, Hong Kong

Next up is another eurospy adventure film, this time a Spanish-Italian-French co-production called Desperate Mission, released in 1965 and starring Germán Cobos as "Agent Z-55" (also the name of the film when it was released in other territories), a sort of low-budget James Bond. As far as I am aware this has never been released on home video format, so a big thanks to Blake Adam on Youtube for uploading it so you can watch it too (English dialogue as well). I had been trying to track down a copy for several months, so I'm not quite sure how I completely missed this upload from 3 years ago.

The film plot is a bit convoluted but revolves around Z-55 being pulled back into service for an American Secret Service agency to pick up where a previous agent left off after being killed.

Following the opening credits we get some driving scenes filmed along Connaught Road Central. The first image below shows the old General Post Office on the left and the mail bridge that crossed the road to supply the mail boats. The camera pans right as the car goes by and we can see Edinburgh Place and City Hall in the background.

The Peninsula Hotel's Former Fountain

Another re-publishing of a film-related post from my old, and now defunct history blog. I suppose this is one might loosely fall into the "Now/Then" category - although it's an on-screen artifact we are looking at rather than a location.

I can't remember where I first heard it - possibly on local Facebook history group when I still had an account - but someone had mentioned that a fountain that once sat, pride of place, in the centre of the Peninsula Hotel's front driveway had been donated to a local school on Hong Kong Island.

There is a brief clip in Soldier of Fortune (1955) that nicely captures it in its former Peninsula Hotel glory.

Soldier of Fortune (1955)

Anyway, after posting my little snippet of historical info on Gwulo.com, someone turned up to correct me and post that it wasn't donated at all but, in fact, was purchased by their grandmother. You can read the comments on the Gwulo link I just posted above but in essence, this person's grandmother, Mrs Wen (溫廖詠楚), was the woman responsible for the creation of the True Light Middle School in Hong Kong.

Mrs Wen was one of the teachers at the True Light Middle School in the Baihedong area of Guangzhou (Canton) and, following the war, she came to Hong Kong and bought a plot of land at 50 Tai Hang Road. Historically, religious groups have been allowed to purchase plots of land very cheaply in Hong Kong on the proviso that the land was used to provide schooling. This is one of the main reasons why most current local Hong Kong schools are founded by and governed by a religious/church organisation.

This was the site, on Tai Hang Road, where the Hong Kong True Light Middle School was established in 1947 and still remains to this day. The events surrounding Mrs Wen's ownership of the fountain are not explained, but in 1965 she bought the fountain from the hotel and donated it to the school where it still stands in the main front courtyard.
  

Actually, if you look very closely at the base, you can see that the one at the school differs slightly. The original one on the screencap above has a rounded lip, but the school one is just flat, so I guess the original base was unsalvageable - perhaps it couldn't be removed without damage. All the same, it's nice to see a little bit of Hong Kong history surviving in a location different from its original one (it happens more than you would think). The screenshot below (from A Queen's Ransom) shows you what replaced it. I think I know which one I prefer.
   

The replacement fountain seen in A Queen's Ransom (1976)

Four Assassins - Will Yun Lee (2011) - Perowne House, Perowne Barracks

I did mention in my last post for Four Assassins that the film's own website included some production photos of the building on Perowne Barracks that served as the main studio space for the variety of internal sets. You can click through to the website here, but just in case it disappears one day I have "borrowed" one of its images of the main building.

I didn't post this initially because I had a real hard time trying to find out where "Perowne House" was exactly, no amount of googling returned any useful information, but it turns out that it was located in the north section of the camp - separated from the rest of the camp when the new Tuen Mun Highway was constructed right through the middle. This part of the camp contained a variety of sports grounds as well as the gym and the aforementioned Perowne House.

This whole section of the old camp was redeveloped circa 2011 into the Harrow International School and a very large multi-unit housing development called "The Bloomsway". So I think it's safe to assume this is why the film crew had the run of the place. Perowne House was located at the eastern end of what is now a luxury house development called "The Highlands". Anyway, mystery solved. As far as I can tell the image below is the only online picture of the place.

Perowne House courtesy of the Four Assassins website

Spitfire - Lance Henriksen (1995) - Cochrane Street, Central

Rex is handcuffed to a lamp post on the corner of Cochrane/Stanley Streets. In the background of the top image you can see the "Good Spring Company". I believe this Chinese medicine shop is still there, albeit with a newer sign.

Anyway,it looks like this is the last post for Spitfire. Time to move on to a new film.

Spitfire - Lance Henriksen (1995) - Wellington Street, Central

The pair are finally caught at the junction of Pottinger Street and Wellington Street. Not much has changed here at all, apart from the fashions.

Spitfire - Lance Henriksen (1995) - Pottinger Street, Central

After beating up their pursuers over in Wanchai, by the magic of the movies, the pair are transported all of a sudden to Pottinger Street - recognisable thanks to its stone slab steps (which give the street its Chinese nickname/unofficial name - 石板街).

Spitfire - Lance Henriksen (1995) - Lockhart Road, Causeway Bay

In another of those remarkable feats of human achievement, running away from the bad guys up a street in Aberdeen leads the pair to Lockhart Road in Wanchai! Specifically where it intersects with Percival Street. The green neon shop (first image) was on the ground floor of the Po Hon Building. In the second and third images you can see the Percival Street-facade of Causeway Bay Plaza.

Spitfire - Lance Henriksen (1995) - Aberdeen Harbour

Aberdeen Harbour proper now as Rex (Tim Thomerson) and Charlie (Kristie Phillips) are taken along the western breakwater in an attemptto disguise them from the pursuing helicopter. The Dairy Farm Cold Storage facilities in the background are still around. The usual cat-and-mouse chase, in and around the floating community, takes place before everything moves back to land.

Spitfire - Lance Henriksen (1995) - Tin Wan Praya Road, Aberdeen

The taxi eventually stops along Tin Wan Praya Road, right next to the Aberdeen Gasometer/Gas storage facility. The driver then walks down the small cutting that links up to the western harbour breakwater. Believe it or not but the Google cameras have made it down there as well.

Spitfire - Lance Henriksen (1995) - Hennessy Road, Wanchai

Another shot of the taxi driving around as it turns out of the eastern end of Johnston Road and heads back west along Hennessy Road. Quite a few of these buildings are still around. 

Spitfire - Lance Henriksen (1995) - Pedder Street, Central

After catching a taxi at the "airport", the cab is filmed driving around various streets in Hong Kong including the area below. This footbridge connected Worldwide House, in the background, with what was Swire House on the corner of Chater Road/Pedder Street. Actually, the footbridge lasted longer than the building because the footbridge remains whereas Swire House was demolished in the late 90s and replaced by the current Chater House. Despite the poor picture quality, you can just make out the words "Swire House" on the right hand side of the top image below.

Spitfire - Lance Henriksen (1995) - Hung Hom Train Station

Although we are supposed to be in the airport terminal, the cylindrical support columns threw me off for a few seconds because the columns at Kai Tak were square. The location is revealed when the actors head outside and we can quite clearly see - in large, thanks to the Hong Kong Polytechnic University across the road - that we are in fact at Hung Hom Station, and not the airport. Mr Pyun pulling a bit of bait and switch there. The bus terminus is still there although the inside of the station has had a very funky new redecoration (I know because I was there just last week - my first time since I caught a cross-border train back in 2016).