The Fighting Dragon - Yasuaki Kurata (1975) - Kai Tak Airport

This film is another of those pastiches consisting of episodes of a show edited together to try and make a movie length feature. In this case the show was called Fight! Dragon apparently shown in Japan despite it being (according to HKMDB credits) largely a HK production. It was also release under the title Challenge Me Dragon. The plot revolves around a kung fu student, Lung Yen-fei (Kurata), who arrrives in Hong Kong to investigate the murder of his master who was otherwise healthy. He soon finds out a bunch of gangsters are after him and gets help from an Interpol agent along the way in the guise of Bruce Leung Siu-lung.

The film kicks off (always literally with these types of movies) at Kai Tak airport as Lung arrives by plane and is immediately beset by people wanting to kill him. A woman surreptitiously leaves him a note asking for help and he later goes to prevent her from being kidnapped at the front entrance. Some mistaken identity ensues as he confuses the Interpol agent tasked with protecting her as one of the bad guys.

Yeung Sze (aka Bolo) walks around this first part of this film with an unlit cigarette perpetually hanging from his mouth. I'm not sure if he is just trying to give up smoking or has lost his lighter somewhere.

Does anyone remember Kai Tak's old clock?

Later in the film the action switches to Japan for a brief period (and then the Philippines, I think) so we also get a brief look at the airport then as well.

Operation Lipstick - Cheng Pei-pei (1967) - 6 Fei Ngo Shan Road, Kowloon Peak

The baddies hideout is represented by the exterior of a property that used to stand at 6 Fei Ngo Shan Road. I thought this may have been a model until I came across it recently in Karate from Shaolin Temple. This film shows it from more or less the same angle as that film, but in much better picture quality. Sadly, this version of the property underwent some renovations in the 1990s/00s and then was completely demolished and replaced quite recently, so sadly is no more.

Anyway, this is where the gang and their boss are based and serves as the location for the rooftop finale as the girls fight off the gangsters from a studio-built replica of the roof.

Operation Lipstick - Cheng Pei-pei (1967) - Shaw Movietown Main Gates

Any self respecting Shaw fan will recognise these gates immediately. They're the main gates at the front of the old Movietown complex and are as iconic as the curved canopy of Shaw House. This shot was obviously taken from the driveway of Shaw House. As far as I know the gates are still installed in the same place but obviously everything is still up in the air as to what will become of the site. Go see them while you still can. Or perhaps some rich fan can buy them and restore them for posterity?

In this scene we are supposed to be at the main gates of the gang leader's house.

Operation Lipstick - Cheng Pei-pei (1967) - Clearwater Bay Road, Sai Kung

In a scene following the discovery of the statuette contains the microfilm, the main characters head back into town to inform the police. Their car is stopped at a junction between two roads.

This scene was filmed at the junction between Clearwater Bay Road and Hiram's Highway. This area now has multiple lanes criss-crossing each other but, as you can see, back in the mid-60s (and later) it was a simple T junction with Clearwater Bay Road heading off to the left and Hiram's Highway curving down the slope towards Sai Kung. It looks like there was a roundabout here but that was just a grass island separating the up and downhill lanes of Hiram's Highway.

Operation Lipstick - Cheng Pei-pei (1967) - Port Shelter, Sai Kung

Following a big fracas on the Star Ferry (a studio set) as the baddies attempt to steal a statuette they believe contains the professor's microfilm, the statuette is tossed over board and Lee and Zhang leap in after it. 

The next day they can be seen drying off aboard a fishing junk out in Port Shelter. Their exact location is on the north side of Sharp Island next to where the public pier is now located.

Operation Lipstick - Cheng Pei-pei (1967) - Shaw House, Clearwater Bay

A familiar sight to any Shaw fan worth their salt is the front of the old Shaw House building with its curved concrete canopy. Shaw House has often stood in for other locations in a variety of Shaw productions and co-productions (examples: The Million Eyes of Sumuru, Shatter) and in this movie it serves as the front entrance for the Silver Dice Night Club where the gang are stationed and where Lee (Cheng Pei-pei) is offered a job.

Operation Lipstick - Cheng Pei-pei (1967) - Sea Terminal, Tsim Sha Tsui

Old readers may remember this post from several years ago that described the "Sea Terminal" in Tsim Sha Tsui - a sort of temporary (from 1962 to circa 1969) point of disembarkation for ship passengers prior to Ocean Terminal being completed. In Operation Lipstick this is the location where Lo Tin (King Pai-chien), the trusted associate of Dr Au, is supposedly about to trade the doctor's secrets but has his wallet lifted by Chan Er (Lee Kwan) just prior to the handover.

Gwulo has a very good image of the Sea Terminal here showing you how it looked. The location has now been subsumed into the Royal Pacific Hotel and Towers.

Operation Lipstick - Cheng Pei-pei (1967) - Tai Mo Shan Road, Tsuen Wan

In case you weren't convinced that the previous location was Route Twisk, the next shot of the kidnap truck shows it turning off Route Twisk and up Tai Mo Shan Road. You can barely make out the words of the road sign but this junction looks quite similar even today despite all the extra tree and vegetation growth covering the hillside. Here's a GoogleEarth comparison.

Operation Lipstick - Cheng Pei-pei (1967) - Route Twisk, Tsuen Wan

The next movie comes courtesy of Celestial's Youtube channel (@ShawBrosCinema) which has put up several videos of their remastered Shaw Bros collection that I assume have not yet been picked up  by anyone for license/release. A big shout out to Will Kouf of SilverEmulsion.com who made me aware of the channel via his Bluesky account.

The film is a comedy starring Cheng Pei-pei (RIP) as a night club singer who is embroiled into James Bond type intrigue as a gang kidnaps a a scientist in an attempt to get hold of the plans of his ground breaking science invention.

The opening exterior shots of this movie involve the doctor's car being hijacked despite its police outrider escort. These scenes were all shot along Route Twisk - the former military road that snakes across the west and north slopes of Tai Mo Shan, Hong Kong's highest mountain. The modern views of these sections of the road are so covered in trees that it was quite hard to find the exact locations, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Doctor Strange - Benedict Cumberbatch (2016) - Brief Glimpse of Hong Kong

Another film to add to my "Brief Glimpse" list is Doctor Strange because although we do have what looks to be an authentic (i.e. not CGI) view of Hong Kong as an establishing shot, the remainder of the Hong Kong-set action piece was filmed on a rather well-made facsimile at Longcross Studios just outside of London. I was quite impressed by the recreation, the business signs were very convincing and from certain angles it is very difficult to know that it is a set. I should know because I've been living in Sham Shui Po District in Kowloon since 2012. There's a brief introduction to the set uploaded to Youtube here.

The basis for the "Sanctum" in the film is a well-known pre-war (built 1931) corner shophouse, Lui Seng Chun (雷生春), located on the corner of Tong Mi Road and Lai Chi Kok Road in Mongkok. It stood for many years falling into disrepair until it was renovated and cleaned up by the Govt and then turned into a placebo TCM clinic by the HKBU. The building was gazetted as a historical monument (giving it full protection* from redevelopment) in 2022.

Lui Seng Chun in 2019

*No one has yet decided to test the limits of Monument "protection", but I predict that if anyone did "accidentally" destroy one of the buildings on the protection list, given they way things work in HK now, I imagine a small fine and a slap on the wrist is pretty much all that will happen.

Karate from Shaolin Temple - Kazuma Kenji (1976) - Baptist Hospital, Waterloo Road

Wu heads out to find a doctor for Musashi to help him with his wounds and heads to a nearby hospital to look for one, unsuccessfully. The hospital is the Baptist Hospital, or at least the original version of it. It's been expanded and redeveloped significantly since the film was made. The entrance portico you see below was facing west onto Waterloo Road opposite Cornwall Street.

Karate from Shaolin Temple - Kazuma Kenji (1976) - Diamond Hill Cemetery, Kowloon

The cemetery at Diamond Hill features in several scenes of this movie although this was before it underwent a massive modernisation and many of the graves on the lower slopes (near to what is now Po Kong Village Road) were removed/relocated for the construction of new columbarium and crematorium buildings (that can be seen here). This movie was also shot prior to the hill - the "Diamond Hill" that gives the area its name - being removed to make way for what is now a cluster of schools and the Po Kong Village Road Park. Hong Kong is big on preserving names, but physical things...not so much.

Lion Rock is at top left

Karate from Shaolin Temple - Kazuma Kenji (1976) - Fei Ngo Shan Road, Kowloon

After leaving the Yuen Yuen Institute, Musashi is undergoing a personal crisis as he grapples with whether or not he should be helping Wu. The following sequence was shot at the junction between Fei Ha Road and Fei Ngo Shan Road. Musashi is stopped by one of Wu's friends, Chang (Gwan Jing-leung) who asks him to try and find out some information for them about the bosses movements. However, the pair are spotted by a couple of the boss's henchmen.

The first image below shows the view down Fei Ha Road as Chang races to catch up with Musashi. The following images shows the junction as the car turns around on the curve. The final image shows what was the art-deco style property at #6 Fei Ngo Shan Road in the background. Remember that property because it will pop up in another film I have lined up after this one.

Looking down Fei Ha Road from the junction

The junction between Fei Ngo Shan Rd and Fei Ha Road

The art-deco spire of 6 Fei Ngo Shan Road in the background