To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - Island House, Tai Po

It's a bit hard trying to figure out which property (or properties) was used for the interior of Lui Lok's house, seen when the gang leaders decide to take each other out during a supposed friendly "gong sau" meeting on neutral ground. However, the exteriors are a different matter and a hint is given in the acknowledgements as the filmmakers thank the World Wide Fund for Nature. It turns out that the location was Island House in Tai Po, now a WWF office and a place I am quite familiar with thanks to my 6 years living just up the road from here.

Anyway, this is the place where Big Sha and Ho fight off a horde of marauding triad gunslingers before being rescued on a motorbike by "Dummy". If you want a comparison, someone has kindly included a bunch of photo sphere's all around the property. This one relates to the bottom image.

To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - St George's Building, Central

Ng's right hand man, Wan (Waisee Lee) goes to the travel agent to book tickets for him and his family to Canada when things get a bit hot. The angle on the top image could only have been taken from the ground floor of the St George's Building in Central. I have no idea if there is/was a real travel agency in there.

To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - Koshi Cottage, Perkins Road

Ng's mansion in this story is a rather grand and opulant place located in Jardines Lookout. The address is 10 Perkins Road and a rather big clue to its location is given in the top image below. So blatant was this that I initially assumed it was a fake sign and perhaps 10 Perkins Road was one of Ng's real life properties. I don't think it was, but as a test I had a look at a 1991 aerial image of Jardines Lookout and located the property that matched the one seen in the images below and guess what - yep, 10 Perkins Road. Sadly, this grand old property is no more and it was replaced by a newer version in 1999. However, the property layout remains similar with the steep drive and front garden (though it now has a swimming pool in there). The new house retains the "Koshi Cottage" name.

Despite his immense wealth, Ng's real, main property at the height of his power was a rather more 'humble' place in Kowloon Tong (yep, the properties in Kowloon Tong are significantly smaller than some of those found at Jardines Lookout). In fact, I even wrote a blog post about it on my old history/exploration blog thing (now deleted, but you can see an archive here). The property became a 'Love Motel' called the "Kent Hotel", but it abruptly closed a few years ago and the old house was knocked down and replaced by something twice as high and twice as ugly.

The Night My Number Came Up - Michael Redgrave (1955) - Kai Tak Airfield footage

Just a quick post to show a brief video (<1 minute) that has been snipped from the longer 1955 movie The Night My Number Came Up starring Michael Redgrave and directed by Leslie Norman (Barry Norman's dad...and why not?). I know I have posted about this before, but it was just screen captures, this time it's the actual footage.Very cool.

To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - Hong Kong University Main Building

The police headquarters where Chief Inspector Tiger Lui (Kenneth Tsang) is based is actually the main building at HKU. This is where Ng first sees Lui's mistress and their son and schemes to get on Lui's good side by getting rid of what is obviously a nuisance to Lui. The polished granite(?) staircase leads from the main entrance up to the first floor and thankfully, everything you see in the screencaps appears to be intact. Here's a more recent view of the staircase that you can compare with the bottom image below.

To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - Arbuthnot Road, Central

Ming's (Lawrence Ng) apartment, where he is having an affair with Fat Kwan's girlfriend May (Amy Yip), is located on Artbuthnet Road. Sadly I don't know the name of the building because it has long been demolished and replaced with a development called  "Bel Mount Garden". Anyway, it's here where he and May are rudely interrupted, mid-coitus, as Fat Kwan's men burst in and threaten them both. Ming escapes by jumping out of his window in the buff and runs off down the road.

"Coitus Interruptus" is quite apt considering you can see the old Caritas Francis Hsu College building next door - Caritas being a Catholic organisation that runs schools and health facilities here.

To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - Davis Street, Kennedy Town

Following the shooting at the restaurant, Little Sha (Frankie Chan) chases one of the kids down Hau Wo Street where he is promptly, and rather graphically, well-and-truly run over by a car. If anyone reading this lives at The Merton, this is what the street looked like before it was built. The tram is turning into Davis Street from Catchick Street.

To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - Star Seafood Restaurant, Tai Wai Road

The establishing shots for the restaurant where the hit on Ng takes place was filmed in Tai Wai. As you can see from the image it was called 海福酒樓 (hoi fuk tsau lau). I think this was the real name rather than a name used for the film, but I could be wrong. Anyway, this same venue is now a "Ming Sing" seafood restaurant (aka Star Seafood). The filmmakers used some hoarding (top image, left hand side) to hide the fact that this street is a bit more modern than the 1960s-era they are trying to portray. This part of the film is one where the film strays quite far from Ng's real life. In the film, he is shot by some hired kids and a bullet hits his leg, causing his "limp". In reality, he was attacked in a punishment/warning attack and his leg was deliberately targeted with a large teak pole.The attack shattered and splintered his leg bones in several places and left him with a permanent disability.

To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - Lobster Bay, Clearwater Bay

Just before I moved to Hong Kong in 2006, I made a brief house-hunting trip in 2005 and, being an avid diver, signed up for some local scuba as well. I was taken by "Splash" (then owned and run by an amiable chap called Damon Rose) to a shore dive site at the end of Lung Ha Wan Road. There's a promontory here which is used for kite flying, and the coast surrounding this area has long been a popular filming location over the years.

The stony beach where I dived is the "Lung Ha Wan" (aka Lobster Bay) that lends its name to this whole area. It's the first beach you come to when heading down the end of Lung Ha Wan Road. Strewn allover the beach are the concrete fragments of a former ramp that, I was told, was a popular smuggling location for local triads until the army came and blew it up. It turns out the demolition took place in 1992 and there is is comment on Gwulo relating to this (I also posted a picture on Gwulo many years ago).

I had wondered what it looked like before the ramp was blown up, and now we need wonder no more because it appears several times in To Be Number One. It's quite the revelation because I wasn't expecting the ramp to be so big.

In the film we see this location on at least three occasions. The first time is when the newly-minted gangsters have enough money to finally smuggle their families into Hong Kong from China on a small sampan. In later scenes, this is also the same place where the gang pick up the opium blocks they have just stolen from a rival gang and, finally, where Tiger Lui's mistress is taken to and shipped back to China after she has been kidnapped by Ng.

To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - Nam Sang Wai, Yuen Long

Ng falls for Tse Yuen-yin (Cecilia Yip) and ingratiates himself with her kids to get closer to her. In the story, she lives in a stilt house on a pond somewhere. I can't find the exact location unfortunately, but I am certain this was filmed in Nam Sang Wai. Sadly it's another place increasingly affected by redevelopment and many of the former ponds have already been filled in for redevelopment.

To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - Jordan Valley Resettlement Estate, Jordan Valley

In reality, Ng was a prolific drug dealer in the Shek Kip Mei resettlement estate, selling drugs via a network of mobile carts selling noodles. However, I think by 1991 (when the film was made) much of the old estate had already been changed and some of the older blocks had already been replaced by taller ones. As a more authentic-looking stand-in, the film crew were able to use the soon-to-be emptied Jordan Valley Resettlement Estate for the "Shek Kip Mei" fight scene as Ng takes out his main competitor, Gold Teeth Ping (Ng Man-tat).

The estate was emptied in two stages in 1991 and 1996 and the area has since been turned into a small park and public swimming pool. However, some of the infrastructure seen in the film remains including the Jordan Valley River nullah and the main road that curved into the estate (first image).

To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - Hong Kong Adventist College, Clearwater Bay

In the next scene, Ng has been caught crossing the border with his friends and is in police custody. If you have ever watched The Freedom Swimmers episode of the Alan Whicker show, then you will know that was standard protocol for many years.

In reality though, the location used for the police station was the Hong Kong Adventist College in Clearwater Bay. This is the main entrance and stairway of the 1939-built college building.

To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - St Peter's Church, The Mariner's Club

Next up is To Be Number One, a romanticised/glorified version of the story of Limpy Ho, one of Hong Kong's most notorious drug lords. The story follows Limpy Ho (Ng Ho-sik - played by Ray Lui) from his beginnings escaping the Communist-fuelled famine in the Mainland, and his rise up through the ranks and power of the Hong Kong triad gangs as he peddled opium and heroine from noodle carts in Shek Kip Mei.

Ray Lui chews up the scenery and even appears to be emulating Marlon Brando's "Godfather" as later in the film it looks like he has stuffed his cheeks with cotton wool to appear fatter. The film was obviously made before the real Ho passed away from cancer in 1991 because the end credits state that he was released in 1995 (in reality he had already had his sentence reduced and was living in supervised hospital care for the remainder of his life).

The opening scene shows Ho (Lui with dyed-grey hair) in his later years as he attends a church service and then looks back on his life. These scenes themselves are now part of their own history because the real-life chapel where this was shot was St Peter's Church located in the recently-demolished old Mariner's Club. The church was deconsecrated in 2018 and the building handed over to the developers in 2020. It has since been replaced by a monstrosity at least three times taller than the original building. 

Crime Lords - Wayne Crawford (1991) - Argyle Street, Mongkok

Another of the few, brief, real locations where the actors (or in this case, actor) shot a scene. I wonder of part of the issue was the fact that filming permits were required at this time. I believe it's only recently that the requirement for filming permits has been dropped in Hong Kong unless the filming would require some sort of crowd or traffic control and the police would need to be used. I could be wrong of course, but it may explain why so many of these films that bothered to come all the way here to shoot, did very little other than distant street shots and establishing shots. Feel free to educate me in the comments if you know better.

Anyway, in this scene LaGrane is trying to track down his wayward partner and stops to use a phone box located at the junction of Argyle Street and Nathan Road. The first image is looking west down Argyle Street and you can just see a distant floating dredger's crane at a time when the old typhoon shelter was still around.

Crime Lords - Wayne Crawford (1991) - Canton Road, Mongkok

Another of the street-level locations actually featuring the actors is Canton Road. The identifying feature here is the blocky building on the left of the screen. This is the Mongkok Market building that, I believe, is currently being (or has already been) demolished.

Crime Lords - Wayne Crawford (1991) - Lion's Club Pavilion, The Peak

No scenes were shot here but there is a view from the Lion's Club Pavilion on the Peak thrown in as a bonus. If the general view wasn't recognisable enough to see where this was shot from, then the shot of the carved, stone lion of the balustrade is a strong clue.

Crime Lords - Wayne Crawford (1991) - Sai Yeung Choi Street, Mongkok

After the two are released from the police station, they run after the Chief Inspector who has just released them in the hope that he can help them find the crime kingpin they are after. I believe this to be the view looking down Sai Yeung Choi Street from the front of the police station. For once some movie geography is the same as reality. It was a lot busier at this section back in the early 1990s it seems. These days it doesn't get as much traffic.

There are some signs worth noting here that also give away the location. In the last image you can clearly see the large red sign that says (r-l) 九龍表行. This is the Chinese name for the Kowloon Watch Company (gau lung biu hong) which is still located on the corner of Sai Yeung Choi Street and Nullah Road. Further on is a black and white vertical sign that says (top to bottom) 麗聲戲院. This is the Chinese name (lai sing hei yuen) for the former Royal Theatre which was located where the Pioneer Centre now stands on the right hand side of the image. I believe it closed in 1990 which would mean this may have been the last time this old sign (it was located on the venue's rear side) was captured on film.