Hong Kong 73 - Yueh Hua (1974) - Carnarvon Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

A general shot from the film (I don't remember the context) that shows a very famous junction between Carnarvon Road and Granville Road in Tsim Sha Tsui. The Kaiser Restaurant was a long standing eatery here (between 1955 - 1977) on the NE corner of the junction. The building it was on was demolished soon after and replaced by the current Taurus Buildingh. However, on the oppiste corner, containing "Heung Bun" (on the right) is one of the buildings still around. Granville Road itself has one of the greatest concentrations of 50s era tenements along both sides of the road. However, they arec all slowly being replaced one by one. 

Hong Kong 73 - Yueh Hua (1974) - Monmouth Terrace, Kennedy Road

Chan goes to find his car after the friends borrowed it and turns up to find it is a wreck and about to get a ticket. This scene was filmed on the service/petrol station layby off Kennedy Road where Monmouth Terrace stands. The structure with the windows on the right of the top image is still there and is the service station building. Behind the policemen is a road sign that says "Monmouth Path". The path starts just behind them and goes down to Star Street area in Wanchai.

Hong Kong 73 - Yueh Hua (1974) - High Street, Sai Ying Pun

 When the whole group goes to the police station to report afew issues, Chan parks his car outside but is called back out to remove his car as it's illegally parked. He then discovers his headlights have been stolen and gets a ticket for driving with no lights. This whole scene was filmed outside the old No.8 police station on High Street and you can see the old psychiatric hospital building, of which the facade still remains, as Chan drives down the street to park again around the corner on Eastern Street.

Hong Kong 73 - Yueh Hua (1974) - View from Hotel Lisboa

The group are staying at a hotel and return to their room after hitting it big. I can't say for sure if the room is real or a set, but the view from the window is definitely the view you would have seen from the original Hotel Lisboa block back in the 1970s. It's a view that disappeared in the 1991 when the second hotel block was completed. The initial image shows a close up of the top of the St Paul's Church facade peaking out above the main block of the neighbouring "Colegio Mateus Ricci". That angle gives us a triangulation point that points all the way back to the Lisboa.

I'm not sure what the long yellow building in the second image is, but I believe it was removed to make way for the visual atrocity that is known as the Grand Lisboa. This latter construction, that I used to refer to as "Stanley Ho's catheter", is the main reason for the lack of a view today, but it was also blocked by the second, round block of the Lisboa mentioned earlier.

In the lowest image, Ching Li has the Club Militar behind her head. It's painted a pastel red colour these days and has had a bit of a facelift. Despite the mess that is the Cotai Strip, Macau in general has a bit more veneration for its built heritage.

So, is it a real hotel or just a studio set with back projection? I'm still unsure.

Hong Kong 73 - Yueh Hua (1974) - Rua das Lorchas, Ponte No.16

Another of the Macau establising shots is an oblique angle of the famous Ponte No. 16 along Rua das Lorchas. This structure was built in 1948 (by Fu Tak Iam I believe - the controller of the original gambling monopoly before he was ousted by Stanley Ho and Henry Fok et al). Thankfully it's still around, or at least was the last time I was here about 3 years ago.

Hong Kong 73 - Yueh Hua (1974) - Avenida do Dr. Oliveira Salazar, Macau

This road isn't known by this name anymore - it has since been split into Avenida Doutor Mário Soares and Avenida da Amizade, I'm just not sure what year that happened. The section youv can see below is now the Avenida da Amizade part. Anyway, the group of friends decide to head to Macau for some gambling and end up losing all their money before pawning their watches and winning it all back again, and then some. I'm not convinced how much of the Macau scenes were actualy filmed there but this image below is one of the shots in the middle of the sequence. The silhouetted building in the distance is the Hotel Lisboa. For a comparison of the same view before the hotel was built, you can see this page (second image down showing a similar aspect).

Hong Kong 73 - Yueh Hua (1974) - Fei Ngo Shan Road

The group decide the only thing for them to do is to go up Fei Ngo Shan Road. However, it's here where they suffer a double puncture and have to push the car all the way back into town. I walked this road just a few weeks ago as part of the Wilson Trail Stage 4 (which is why I was able to make this post, it's basically the same road even though the name changes at the junction with Jat's Incline).

Hong Kong 73 - Yueh Hua (1974) - Clearwater Bay Road

Now unable to go to either Stanley, or back to Fanling, the group instead decide to head into Sai Kung Tai Au Mun. This is basically the area where all the Clearwater Bay beaches are located. To get there they have to drive back into Kowloon and get on Clearwater Bay road. The images below show the section where it joins Fei Ngo Shan Road (you can see the signpost for Gilwell's Camp). In the film, they are stopped once again, this time by the police who tell them the road ahead is blocked by a truck.

Hong Kong 73 - Yueh Hua (1974) - Lion Rock Tunnel Road, Shatin

After turning back on their journey to Stanley, the group then head back through the Lion Rock Tunnel towards Fanling. It's here where they are told there is also congestion in that direction as well!

The initial image below shows Lion Rock, but it's a view not many people are familiar with because it's from the Shatin-side of the hills. As the camera zooms out, you can see that we are at the tunnel toll booths. The booths are still marked on Google Maps but were removed circa 2023 when the Govt implemented a fully comprehensive electronic tagging system for vehicles entering/leaving the tunnel. The same system has been applied across Hong Kong which is why you no longer have to stop to pay a toll on the way to/from the airport.

This last image was taken on the Shatin-end of Lion Rock Tunnel Road where it intersected with Tai Po Road. Turn left and you head back to Kowloon, turn right and the road takes you past Shatin. The cars in the backgrpund are on the Tai Po Road, but behind them would be where the KCR rail line ran alongside the road. For modern context, this area is more or less the same one where Lion Rock Tunnel Road ends today, at the junction with Tai Po Road - Tai Wai section, but closer to the "Scenery Court" development. 

Hong Kong 73 - Yueh Hua (1974) - Cross Harbour Tunnel Road

The group of friends decide to go to Stanley for the day, only to have to turn back due to congestion. This image is interesting because it shows the beginning of the construction work that would become Hung Hom Station. The ramp on the right is the ramp that connects Hong Chong Road with the podium/bus terminus area of the current station. So this 1973/74 image fits nicely with the 1975 opening of the new station. The camera is located on a pedestrian bridge. The bridge is still there but has been heavily developed since then. It's the one that connects the station to the PolyU site.

Hong Kong 73 - Yueh Hua (1974) - Tai Lin, Nathan Road

Chan's (Yueh Hua) dad is the manager at the Tai Lin Radios store on Nathan Road. This was a real place and a real business that sadly went into administration following the 2008 financial crisis. Despite this the large Chinese sign outside the shop stayed in place for many years and was a sort of local landmark - knowing its location (at #310) has certainly helped me locate a few places on the blog in the past.

Hong Kong 73 - Yueh Hua (1974) - Star Ferry Pier, Tsim Sha Tsui

Following on from his huge success with The House of 72 Tenants, Chor Yuen (perhaps known better to people who come here as the head bad guy in Police Story), Hong Kong 73 was a follow up that includes one of the biggest ensemble cast I have ever seen in a movie. The roll call is so large the film is still introducing them (via on screen titles of their names) right up until the end. The film is a satire  and the plot follows a closeknit group of residents along "Hong Kong Street" and sees them dealing with a variety of issues in Hong Kong at the time: gambling, the stock market, poverty, success, hospital queues, poor housing, suicide, typhoons etc. As a current Hong Kong resident, a lot of these problems resonate with modern Hong Kong as well, so they are not really things that have ever gone away. A film like this could never be made today. If it was the cast would be blacklisted, the director would be tried for endangering National Security and the film would never get through the current censorship regime.  

Yueh Hua and Ching Li star as the main characters. A couple who work as a security guard and high school teacher respectively, and the story revolves around them and their various family members and acquaintances. The film starts off with some nice views of the Kowloon Star Ferry pier in Tsim Sha Tsui as seen from the rooftop carpark of Ocean Terminal.

The Brain Stealers - Lily Ho Li-li (1968) - Diamond Hill Cemetery, Kowloon

Pretending that their father has been killed, the siblings go through a mock funeral for him to throw the kidnappers off his scent. This scene was filmed at the Diamond Hill Cemetery.

Tsz Wan Shan Estate (Blks 51 & 52) in the background

The Brain Stealers - Lily Ho Li-li (1968) - Kai Tak Airport

Whilst the family pretend to bury their deceased father, instead he is slipping away to Japan to hide via a plane from Kai Tak Airport.

The Brain Stealers - Lily Ho Li-li (1968) - Port Shelter, Sai Kung

Jia-wen is trying to woo Chiu-lan and takes her out on a boat for the day whilst they are being watched by the agents from the UN. This scene was shot at the Tai Mong Tsai-end of the harbour.

The Brain Stealers - Lily Ho Li-li (1968) - Shaws Movietown

I seem to have lost count how many times Shaw House has been used as a nightclub in one of its productions. In this film it is called Queen Bee and is supposed to be located in Tokyo. In the film it is owned by Chiu-lan's fiance, Jia-wen (Peter Chen Ho) and is where her brother is kidnapped from.

This isn't the only appearance of Movietown in the film though and a few more shots were used for a variety of scenes. The following ones are when the UN are showing agent 009 (Lin Chih-yung) footage of the scientist's laboratory.

The famous yellow gates (Shaw fans know)

There are also some other lab vicinity scenes later that were also filmed inside Movietown. IN fact, I believe the buildings you see below are ones that have been left intact at the very front of the plot (including the old Shaw House). The first building below was the old colour lab located at the south tip of Movietown.

The Colour Lab

You can see the Colour Lab in the distance

The Yellow Gates

Bill Lake R.I.P

I was saddened this week to learn of the passing of Bill Lake on 12 June 2026. As most of you will know, Bill was one of the earliest foreign actors in the HK movie industry and had quite an extensive list of roles to his name over the years (HKMDB) including a few TV roles in the early 80s as well.

I first met Bill at a Gwulo dinner circa 2015 and we had fairly regular meet ups in the intervening time, often with David Bellis (Gwulo head honcho) and myself heading over to Sai Kung to sit in Bill's favourite venue (the Duke of York) for a large pint of lemonade. He was definitely a bit of a raconteur and shared lots of stories with us about his time in Hong Kong and the various roles he was involved in during the 1970s and 80s. His later life was dedicated to researching the history of Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation and is why Gwulo became a shared point of (historical) interest.

Bill posing at the Duke of York

Back in 2022, smack in the middle of Covid, I persuaded him to partake in an interview about his film career with my good buddy Arnaud (see here) and it was not long after this that he found out he had cancer. Despite this he was fairly stoic about it all and never complained about his predicament. In fact he was very matter-of-fact with me about it in our various updates over the past few years. This also seemed to give him the impetus to get a book written about his life and he was able to send me a copy a few weeks back.

Anyway, rest in peace Bill.

The Brain Stealers - Lily Ho Li-li (1968) - Shui Hing House/Prestige Tower

Another Inoue Umetsugu film here in the shape of The Brain Stealers, one of the many spy-oriented movies that Shaws produced in the 1960s. This one stars Lily Ho as a judo expert, Li Chiu-lan, daughter of a famous scientist who has just invented a process to boost plant growth and yield to help solve food shortages in the light of the earth's ever increasing population. The problem is there is a nefarious megalomanic called Dr Zero who want the obtain the secrets so he can use it on humans and create superhumans to help hm rule the world. Dr Zero has been kidnapping scientists from around the world and forced them to invent a machine that can swap peoples' minds (hence "Brain Stealers"), and he uses the machine on Chiu-lan's brother to swap his mind with one of his henchmen.

The plot is hilarious but good fun and although supposedly shot in Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan and Thailand (according to the excellent HKMDB) it is mainly a studio-based film with the odd location thrown in here and there.

The film opens with a panning shot of the harbour from Tsim Sha Tsui as the camera moves towards a judo class taking place on a nearby rooftop. This is where we first see Chiu-lan's prowess at chucking people around. The building they are training on is what is now called Prestige Tower but back in the 1960s was Shui Hing House. It's a nice view though because we also get to see the upper floors of the former Peninsula Court/Marco Polo hotel, the "Rolex" sign on top of Hotel Merlin and the brand spanking new Hankow Centre in the background (completed 1968 - it's the very clean building in the abckground of the third image).

The Peninsula Court Hotel rooftop (behind the titles)

The sign says (r-l) 香港大川柔道學院 (Hong Kong Great River Judo College)