Flight to Hong Kong - Rory Calhoun (1956) - Haven of Hope Jetty, Junk Bay

Here's another one I forgot to post back in the day despite including it in my Gwulo rundown a couple of years back. I scratched my head for quite sometime before being able to recognise some of the background hills and pinpointing the location of this small pier. There's a little bit more information here, but essentially this wooden jetty/pier was constructed to facilitate access to and from the Haven of Hope Hospital on the west side of Junk Bay back in the 1950s. The hospital was built for the purpose of treating those with TB so the remote location was intentional. Even today, HK sometimes suffers from an outbreak of this disease, largely from being imported from nearby territories where it has yet to be eradicated. The lack of roads meant the only access to the hospital was by sea, hence the pier.

In the movie, this is the undisclosed remote island where the diamond thieves/hijackers force the passenger plane to land before making off on a small motorboat with their haul. The only thing we know is that it is not supposed to be in Hong Kong but somewhere between Hawai'i and the Asian mainland.

The hospital is still around, but the amount of reclamation in Junk Bay and subsequent development means that it is now a major urban area to the west of Kowloon (officially it's part of the New Territories, not Kowloon). The pier is long gone, replaced by Ling Hong Road and I could probably get there in about 30 minutes if I still had my motorbike. In 1956, this was a major outing for the film crew so I suspect this pier scene and the subsequent boat raid sequence were shot on the same day/shoot. The fact that Tony (Rory Calhoun) rides around in the same boat used by the diamond hijackers in this scene seems to confirm that.