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.