Hong Kong Godfather - Leung Kar-yan (1985) - View over East Tsim Sha Tsui

The next film up is the absolutely batshit crazy Hong Kong Godfather, the 1985 one directed by none other than Johnny Wang Lung-wei. It's Chinese name is 尖東梟雄 (tsim1 dung1 hiu1 hung4) which helps to differentiate it from the 1991 Golden Princess film of the same name.

This film centres around an avuncular triad boss, Han (played by Shek Kin and perhaps riffing off his character name from Enter the Dragon), and his various enforcers, Playboy Lung (Norman Tsui), Sergeant Lam (Cheung Kuen), Rotten Chi (Shum Wai) and finally, the now retired-from-gang-life, Mad Wei (Leung Kar-yan). Rotten Chi basically lives up to his nickname and feels hard done by compared to the others and agrees to work for a rival gang to bring down Boss Han and help the new gang take over East Tsim Sha Tsui. The story follows Chi's inept attempts at taking down his rivals, and starting a gang war that ends with the three sworn brothers storming the HQ of the rival gang in one of the most intense and gory action sequences I have seen in a long time. John Woo has his "Bullet Ballet"and Johnny Wang Lung-wei establishes himself in this film as the king of "Machete Mayhem". The last 10 minutes or so of the film is just utterly relentless. Anyway, if you fancy a watch, someone uploaded it to the Internet Archive (i.e. it's downloadable).

The film opens (and ends) with a nice view across to East TST (where much of the action takes place). This is the view taken from the roof of Chevalier House on the west side of Chatham Road South. The long ornamental pool is part of the former Urban Council Centenary Garden that readers of my old, now defunct, history-based blog will know features columns from the old Kowloon train terminus. Auto-plaza is on the right and Inter-Continental Plaza is on the left. Both feature in the film.

The Scavengers - Vince Edwards (1958) - Peking Restaurant, East Point Road

Sometimes little facts pop up in my comments that lead to an identification months, or even years later. A good case in point is this following screencap of the Peking Restaurant. I can't remember the context from the film but this shot was an establishing shot for part of the sequence where Stuart is trying to track down his estranged wife. You can just make out the road sign on the side of the building and it looks like it says "?? Point Rd". As far as I know there are only two road with the word "point" in their name: East Point Road in Causeway Bay and North Point Road in...erm North Point.

Well, going back over old posts I recalled that fellow Gwulo'er "C" (who I met for the first time in person last year btw) had commeneted on one of my old posts showing some buildings in and around Yee Wo Street. Here is the post from Heisser Hafen Hongkong (aka Secrets of Buddha). But TL:DR, here is his pertinent comment:

There was a restaurant called Peking Restaurant (東興樓, pronounced Tung Hing Lau) on the ground floor of Hop Kwan Building men's hostel (not sure if it is the official English name; Chinese name is 合羣大厦男子公寓).

Well, it seems as though this is the restaurant in the screencap. You can see the English name in neon above the door, but more eagle-eyed (and perhaps Chinese literate) peeps will notice that in Chinese writing on the door lintel is three Chinese words that look very much like (reading r-l) 樓興東 i,e, Tung Hing Lau as described by C in his comment.

So, East Point Road it is and this is obviously the ground floor of the Hop Kwan Building. According to T in that same post, the current building, the Island Centre, was constructed in 1984 so I guess this building must have disappeared a few years before that. I don't know how long the restaurant was around for.