Bullet for Hire - Simon Yam (1991) - Salisbury Road, East Tsim Sha Tsui

The overseas policemen leave the meeting and are given a motorbike escort out of the East TST hotel area and onto Salisbury Road. Not much has changed here other than the hotel names. The Harbourview is now the Intercontinental Grand Stanford, and the Hotel Nikko is the previously mentioned New World Millennium.

Harbourview Hotel on the right (now IC Grand Stanford)

Hotel Nikko, now the NW Millennium

Bullet for Hire - Simon Yam (1991) - New World Millennium Hong Kong Hotel, East TST

Bullet for Hire, released in 1991, is a story about triad hitmen, Ngok (Lo Lieh), Han (Simon Yam) and Shan (Jacky Cheung), working for a ruthless and cunning boss (Dick Wei). The older of the hitmen, Ngok is feeling his age and so boss man brings in new guy, Shan, to assist Han. Their relationship starts off a bit rocky, but Han soon gets to like and trust Shan.

At the beginning of the film a delegation of overseas police (I think they are supposed to be Interpol) come to Hong Kong to meet with the local police brass concerning the increasingly international triad problem. The meeting takes place in East TST in what is now the New World Millennium Hong Kong Hotel but at the time of filming was the "Hotel Nikko HongKong".

A big thanks to Matthew Essary (@wheelscritic.bsky.social) on Bluesky for providing me with a copy for review.

Chinchem Golden Plaza is opposite the hotel

Summons to Death - Tang Ching (1967) - Basalt Island, Port Shelter

The film finishes off where it started, in Port Shelter. The sea cave that the pair go through in order to reach the treasure is located on the south east side of Basalt island - one of Port Shelter's easternmost islands. GoogleEarth has a single image that shows the cave here from the same angle that can be seen in the lower image.

Summons to Death - Tang Ching (1967) - Hotel Merlin, Middle Road

A fourth pirate brother, Cheung Biu (Huang Tsung-hsun), is responsible for killing all of his fellow pirates for the treasure map and, in a bit of pre-Mission Impossible face swapping, Tang Lui creates a mask of him so he can access his hotel room in town. The hotel in question was the Hotel Merlin located on the corner of Hankow and Middle Roads. This is where the Kowloon Hotel now stands although the Kowloon Hotel takes up the space once occupied by both the Hotel Merlin and the Peninsula Court Hotel. The hotel has appeared briefly on the blog before, although in name only, see the bottom images on this post.

I do remember Chaplin Chang telling me many years ago that Hotel Merlin was where the production offices were based for the filming of Lord Jim whilst the crew were in town for the HK-based scenes.

Summons to Death - Tang Ching (1967) - Lobster Bay, Sai Kung

Mei-Li and Tang Lui agree to meet Poon at Lobster Bay to formulate a plan to get back at Ma Loong. This is a section of Lobster Bay that is now fairly difficult to reach due to general growth of foliage and the construction of the riding stables. I did some coasteering here about ten years ago, but sadly my only pictures of this section are looking in rather than looking out (see lower image). In my more 'recent' image (actually snapped in July 2015) the area we see the actors arriving in the top image is the foliage covered area behind the beach.

Summons to Death - Tang Ching (1967) - Long Ke Wan, Sai Kung

In an attemtped execution - in line with the best of Bond (i.e. anything other than just shooting someone dead) - Tung Lui and Mei-Li are knocked unconscious and wake up inside a sealed wooden box that has been left for the high tide to drown them. They must act quickly to survive and end up rolling the box with the incoming waves. This was all filmed on the (still) beautiful beach of Long Ke Wan. It's a traipse to get to even now, despite more modern transport links, so I imagine in 1967 this involved a boat ride from Port Shelter. Funnily enough, we've seen this location before on the blog when it stood in for the Italian riviera in The Million Eyes of Sumuru.

Summons to Death - Tang Ching (1967) - Hillside Villa, 11 Fei Ngo Shan Road

We were here not so long ago in the other Tang Ching film: Inter-Pol. I won't repeat myself here but in this movie the property is owned by pirate brother Poon and he lets Mei-Li stay here. It's where Tang Lui (Tang Ching) goes to meet her to exchange his part of the treasure map.

Summons to Death - Tang Ching (1967) - Tai Po Road Lookout, Tai Po Road

After evading the cops, pirate brother Poon (Ku Feng) runs down onto Tai Po Road and is met by another of his former pirate brothers, Ma Loong (Chiang Kuang-chao). As the car turns around it drives back towards Kowloon past a pavilion. This is the Tai Po Road Lookout and the pavilion is still there - although the lookout's view is perhaps not as expansive as it was back in the late 60s.

Summons to Death - Tang Ching (1967) - View from Fei Ngo Shan Road

Poon escapes the police at Shatin Inn and, all of a sudden, is above Kowloon near to Fei Ngo Shan Road. The large hill in the middle image is the "Diamond Hill" that the area is named after. The hill is long gone having been excavated and the area was turned into the Fung Tak Estate and adjacent Po Kong Village Road Park (there's a great bike track there for anyone interested). People always ask me where the hill is in Diamond Hill and, well, that's where it was.

Bill Lake - new autobiography just released.

Some of you may recall a video interview with Bill Lake that I helped arrange a few years back. The interview was conducted by Arnaud Lanuque for his House of Asian Cinema Youtube channel (and to add to his vast archive of Hong Kong and other Asian film actor interviews).

One of the upshots of this was that Bill felt it was time to put it all down into written form and the result has just been released on Amazon.com. So please go ahead and grab a copy if you are a fan of 70s and 80s cinema. The book details Bill's upbringing in the UK and his career as a gunner in the Royal Artillery - the very vocation that led him to settle in Hong Kong. These days Bill is one of the foremost military historians in Hong Kong and South China, and it was our shared interest in this that led us to first meet via Gwulo.com. Go buy his book!