Story of Ricky - Louis Fan Siu-wong (1991) - Nai Chung, Ma On Shan

The flashback sequence as Ricky is flying model aircraft with his girlfriend was filmed along the grassy shoreline at Nai Chung. The same area where Kickboxer, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story and Les Anges Gardiens were filmed.

Story of Ricky - Louis Fan Siu-wong (1991) - Estabelecimento Prisional de Macau, Coloane

The main setting for the story is a prison and the film used the very real Macau prison (on Coloane, then called the "Estabelecimento Prisional Masculino") for the location filming. The prison looks brand new and this is most likely because that the crew probably shot there soon after its completion, but before it became operational, in 1990.

Having said that, it's obvious many of the interiors (and some exteriors) were studio sets. It might be possible to figure out some of the exteriors (such as Ricky's burial punishment scene, or the final [spoiler alert] wall breaking scene) but then again, it might not.

Story of Ricky - Louis Fan Siu-wong (1991) - Taipa-Coloane Causeway, Macau

One of the most over the top gratuitously gory and violent movies ever to come out of Hong Kong is Story of Ricky. Based on the Riki-Oh manga comic, it follows the trials and tribulations of convicted killer Ricky (Louis Fan), jailed for killing his girlfriend's rapist, as he finds himself in the middle of a corrupt and violent institute run by a sadistic warden and his assistant. Its Japanese comic origins explain why the violence is OTT but there was obviously a budgetary constraint involved and the crew did a fantastic job on what looks like limited resources. If there are any fans of Peter Jackson's Bad Taste reading this then you will appreciate the effects/FX in this film. 

The opening shots of the film are a bit of lost history because they were filmed on what was once the causeway (or isthmus) that connected Taipa to Coloane. It's historical because this place doesn't exist anymore, at least not in any recognisable form, since the reclamation between the two former islands - the Cotai Strip - joined them together. The route of this old causeway is still there but now supports the Estrada do Istmo, the main road that runs through the centre of the Cotai Strip.

It's hard to believe that the left hand side of the top image is now completely filled with garish casinos and hotels. Google Earth's Macau imagery is quite old now (2008), but you can still get a feel for the changes by looking at this similar view. 

A Touch of Zen - Hsu Feng (1971) - Whitehead Point, Ma On Shan

The second Hong Kong location, that makes up the second part of the finale of A Touch of Zen, is Whitehead Point. After leaving Commander Hsu (Hang Ying Chieh) tied to some trees in the forest, the group continue their walk and it's here where they find him again, kneeling in the sand, with his two sons, in an apparent gesture of repentence.

This was a location that King Hu would return to use later in the finale of The Fate of Lee Khan and The Valiant Ones, but has also been seen on several other occasions. I usually refer to this place by its English name, Whitehead Point, but I believe its proper name in Chinese is Wu Kwai Sha Tsui (烏溪沙咀 - lit. dark creek sandy point).

I'm still not sure if this place was a quarry or not, but it was later turned into a Vietnamese refugee detention centre before being given over to storage. Currently it contains a cycle velodrome run by the HK Sports Institute and a golf driving range.

A Touch of Zen - Hsu Feng (1971) - Shing Mun Reservoir, Tsuen Wan

While we're on the subject of King Hu films supposedly shot only in Taiwan, I thought it is worth including some shots of the last 30 minutes or so of A Touch of Zen. The Chinese title 俠女  (Haap Lui in Cantonese) means "chivalrous woman" and refers to the main character, Yang Hui-ching (Hsu Feng), who has escaped the clutches of a corrupt eunuch who has had her family killed. Most of the film was indeed shot in Taiwan, but the last half hour of extended finale - as the righteous fugitives battle the eunuch's military commander (Han Ying-chieh) and his two sons (one of them played by Sammo Hung) - was shot at two locations in Hong Kong.

This first location is when Mr Gu, along with his newly-acquired baby son, falls asleep among some trees next to what looks like a river. The river is in fact Shing Mun Reservoir and the trees are a cluster of paperbark trees which are quite famous at this location and have featured in numerous films over the years. In fact, King Hu returned here the next year to shoot scenes for The Valiant Ones.

This area is located at the northwest side of the reservoir and is fairly easy to get to. It has changed a bit (and the reservoir is never quite this full these days) but the paperbark trees are still there.

The film's star, Hsu Feng, retired from the film world a while back and now runs a large property development company in Hong Kong set up by her late husband (Tomson Group).

Come Drink With Me - Cheng Pei-pei (1966) - Ho Sheung Heung, Sheung Shui

I believe the final fight of this film - where the bandits attack the convoy after they have been cheated out of their hostage by Drunken Cat - was indeeed shot in Taiwan. The terrain is too expansive to be Hong Kong and the mountains are not those found in Hong Kong. The immediate previous scene though - where the prisoner exchange takes place on a desolate hilltop - was shot in Hong Kong.

I always have trouble finding a suitable name for this location. I usually refer to it simply as "Pak Shek Au", but I'm not sure how much of this area falls under that name. This particular location - the hilltop where the gang leader's prison crate is pushed backdown the hill - is closer to Ho Sheung Heung and I have previously called it "Roy's Hill" (in a since deleted post) because it can be seen in the background of the opening fight scene of Enter the Dragon that features Roy Chiao. This hill is just slightly east of a small cluster of houses called "Phoenix Garden" - once again the Google marker is snapping to nearby buildings, so here is the position is GoogleEarth so you can see where I am referring to. In Open Street Map it's called "Kidney Hill". 

In Come Drink With Me, we're seeing it from its summit (lower two images) as Drunken Cat pushes the cart backdown the hill towards the Governor's troops. At various points of this sequence we catch a glimpse of how unspoilt it once was. Now it's just full of junk, corregated steel fencing, small industrial facilities and much of the site formation work for the first phase of the so-called "Northern Metropolis". I've chosen a selection of images to highlight some of the views.

The west flank of Crest Hill is the back ground in these two images above

The round hillock is called Fung Kong Shan and Yueh Hwa is looking NW.

The distant, grey hills are in Tanglangshan Park in Shenzhen, China

Come Drink With Me - Cheng Pei-pei (1966) - Shaw's Movietown, Clearwater Bay

It wouldn't be a Shaw movie if the Movietown set didn't appear at least a few times. In Come Drink With Me there are at least two recognisable (to me) spots in the old Movietown lot that have been used. The first is when we are initially introduced to Cheng Pei-pei's character, Golden Swallow. I'm not sure how convincing this disguise is given how stunning Cheng Pei-pei was, but in the shot below she is supposed to be disguised as a man, and this is how the bandits first encounter her. The location is the small bridge which can also be seen on this blog in The Million Eyes of Sumuru and Bons Baisers de Hongkong. It's interesting to note how the buildings surrounding it had changed from time to time.

The second location I want to show will be quite familar to regular readers because it is the large temple set that was used many times during the 1960s. In fact it has appeared at least twice on this blog as well because it was used in The Vengeance of Fu Manchu and The Million Eyes of Sumuru. In Come Drink With Me, this is the Buddhist temple operated by a corrupt Abbot who is in cahoots with the bandits. The bandits are using it as their hideout and have Golden Swallow's brother captive there.

In terms of its location on the Movietown site, the temple was constructed on the area that is now occupied by the Clearwater Bay ESF School site. You can see the site (lower left) was later (early 70s) turned into another Chinese town set, but it looks like the temple building was kept and incorporated into that new set.

Come Drink With Me - Cheng Pei-pei (1966) - Kowloon Peak

I've been doing these IDs on an adhoc basis (normally I have them all lined up and ready to go) and hadn't realised so much was being filmed up around Kowloon Peak, so apologies for multiple posts featuring locations that are all quite close to each other.

The following image is still part of the opening caravan scene as the troops are making their way to wherever before being ambushed. In the image below you can see the start of the higher ridgeline that ends in Kowloon Peak proper. I believe this section is called "Elephant Hill".  The lack of a road and presence of only a path indicates this is a little further east of Fei Ngo Shan Road. There is a flat piece of ground where the path still contours the side of the hill. 

A few later images appear to show the area further around the bend (i.e. in the above image, off camera to the left) where the ambush scene was filmed. In those shots you can see the same part of the hill in the background. It's hard to pin an exact location here because this area is now quite overgrown as well as having an electricity pylon built on the site - no doubt the flatter topography was conducive to its construction.

Jade Faced Tiger (Chen Hung Lieh) on Kowloon Peak

This final image shows the view looking more or less due east from the same area. On the right, in the far distance, just behind the man halfway down the slope, is the distant peak of High Junk Peak in Clearwater Bay. All in all this scene involves some careful framing to exclude much of the modern development that would have been visible to the actors and crew.

Come Drink With Me - Cheng Pei-pei (1966) - Fei Ngo Shan Road, Kowloon Peak

This image shows the cutting I have referred to previously, where the road crosses the ridge from one side to the other. The district boundary runs along the road here so the group are moving from Sai Kung District into Wong Tai Sin District. It wouldn't surprise me if King Hu just turned his camera around at this spot to film this earlier view. Once again, Google maps is messing with my marker locations so the one below is not where I placed the pin (click on the location at the bottom of the post). It's close enough but this is a recurring issue I have with Googlemap pins, especially so in more remote locales.

Come Drink With Me - Cheng Pei-pei (1966) - Fei Ngo Shan Road, Kowloon Peak

Continuing on Kowloon Peak, the next shot clearly shows the view along the Kowloon ridgeline towards Beacon Hill in the distance. The two-pronged peak just before Beacon Hill is, of course, Lion Rock. You can see a very similar view here, in Heisser Hafen Hongkong. The group of actors would have been standing near the cutting where the road crosses from one side of the ridge to the other.

Come Drink With Me - Cheng Pei-pei (1966) - Tai Lo Au, Kowloon Peak

Welcome to one of my favourite Shaw films, the 1966 Wuxia classic that helped establish King Hu as one of the top directors of the genre as well as launching a 19 year old Cheng Pei-pei into film stardom. Wikipedia states that the film was shot in Taiwan and Shaw Brothers studios, but to my discerning eye I can also see several scenes were shot elsewhere around Hong Kong's then unspoilt and spectacular New Territories - these days the NT looks more like someone's scrapyard, unfortunately.

The plot revolves around a band of ruthless bandits who have taken the Governor's son captive and are holding him hostage in order to effect a prisoner exchange for their captive leader. The Governor dispatches his daughter, the Golden Swallow (Cheng Pei-pei), to capture the bandits, but despite her martial prowess she is eventually overwhelmed and is only able to avoid defeat with the help of the mysterious Drunken Cat (Yueh Hwa aka Elliot Ngok) - a beggar who has his own agenda but one that is closely linked to her success.

The opening scenes show a caravan of troops making its way through the hills before being ambushed by the bandits and the Governor's son being kidnapped. I've managed to identify some of these scenes as being in Hong Kong, starting with this initial shot of some seemingly empty hills.

The view in the image below is taken from Fei Ngo Shan Road looking approximately northeast. The small track running alongside that hill (Tung Yeung Shan) is now part of Stage 4 of the Wilson Trail. In the middle distance is a prominent hilltop that marks Buffalo Pass. There's a very close approximation of this view (though not exact) in this photo uploaded to GoogleEarth. So I think the camera was placed somewhere on the road where Fei Ngo Shan Road moves from the north (Sai Kung) side of the ridge, to the south (Kowloon).

The Thieves - Kim Yoon-seok (2012) - Harbour Grand Kowloon, Hung Hom

In my last The Thieves post, after settling the diamond heist with the Triad gang in South Korea, the story moves back to Hong Kong as the gang go their separate ways. The end scene was shot on the rooftop of the Harbour Grand Hotel in Kowloon. This is the same place seen a few years later in The Confidence Man JP: The Movie.

The Thieves - Kim Yoon-seok (2012) - 98 Carpenter Road (rear of), Kowloon City

The gang leaves their HK hideout on a mission to return to Korea and track down Macao. The shot used for them exiting on to the street is the alleyway located at the back of an old block that once stood at 98 Junction Road. That said, the alleyway opens around the corner, on Carpenter Road, and this is what we can see in the images below. The old block has since been demolished but the alleyway is still there.

The Thieves - Kim Yoon-seok (2012) - V King Lounge, Hung Hom

After the events of Macau, Macao Park is in hiding in Hong Kong and appears to be staying in a room behind a bar.The bar used for this is the V King Lounge bar located on the Hung Hom promenade. It's one of the businesses that occupies the commercial units inside the Hung Hom ferry Pier.

The Thieves - Kim Yoon-seok (2012) - Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter

The gang surreptitiously arrive back in Hong Kong and are holed up on a boat in Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter. From here they plot their next moves.