Fist of Fury - Bruce Lee (1972) - Rua Da Barra, Macau

This location has long eluded me because I only had a very low quality image of the scene to look at, but thanks to AP for sending me an image, from what I believe is one of Steve Kerridge's books, I can now see that this was shot along Rua Da Barra in Macau. The turn into the side street is clearly marked by a street sign that reads "Travessa da Barra". I've included that image below. It's quite hard to believe how much Macau has changed since this film was shot, with all of the buildings in view being replaced by Macau mid-rise apartment blocks. The street is located in the São Lourenço parish and you can see the most modern view of it (well, from 2008...Google hasn't been back for years) here.

This is the second exterior location used in this short rickshaw sequence. I posted about the first street  way back at the birth of this blog in 2011. See here.

The location revealed by the street sign

The Yellow Muffler - Betty Ting Pei (1972) - Shaws Movietown, Clearwater Bay

Continuing my wholesale appropriation of all the Shaw movies being posted to Youtube by Celestial Pictures (reminder), the next one I am looking at is The Yellow Muffler starring Betty Ting Pei. Proof, if you ever needed it, that she really wasn't a very good actress at all and just appears to have got through her career by pouting and fluttering her eyelashes.

The story revolves around three sisters who want to break into showbusiness but are held back by their ageing father who also happens to have his own magic show at a nightclub. He gets sacked (basically because he's a bit crap) and decides to go to Taiwan for work and expects his daughters to go with him, but they refuse and eventually only the youngest goes with him. The other two try to make a break on their own but bomb and are eventually offered help to get into the movie business. The film was shot in 1971 and released in January 1972. It does use a couple of outdoor locations but for many scenes it's quite obviously somewhere inside the Movietown complex.

As well as filling in for other locations, Movietown also features itself because of the girls trying to break into the movie industry, but in the film it has become "Golden Crown Studios". See below for some not so convincing matte glass paintwork effects.

Anyway, as with my old post for The Lady Hermit, I've tried to identify a few of the places we see with where they were located within the studio lot (I will try and do this with the old GH studio as well at some point). So it's time to break out my crayons again. The base image I am using is a b&w aerial image from 1982 courtesy of HKMaps.hk. Click on the image for a closer view.

Click to zoom in

The first spot is just after the girls leave the cinema and are walking home. This was shot at point A. I'm not sure what the building was though.

The next image is the glass painting effect I referred to earlier. It shows the real Movietown in the bottom part of the image (the gate and driveway and Shaw House) but for a weird reason has covered up the various warehouses on the hill with fake ones. The close ups were obviously filmed at the main gate (point B).

This building below is located at Point C on the main aerial image. If anyone knows what it was used for please feel free to comment. Those circular vents were quite distinctive and have cropped up in many Shaw films over the years.

Next up is this shot taken from the north side of the plot (point D). Note the previously mentioned building with the circular vents can be seen centre right, just behind Irene Chen's head.

The final bit of Movietown is when the father returns and is given a tour of the studios. The first image shows the covered walkway next to building the building at point E. The group then turn left (marked by the red arrow) and walk alongside the circular vent building at point F. 

Anyway, that's all I could see for now. If anything else pops up I'll be sure to add it.

The Water Margin - David Chiang (1972) - Shaws Movietown

It wouldn't be a Shaw movie without at least a small mention of the Movietown sets. Anyway, there now follows a hiatus in posts as I look for new films to feature and perhaps resurrect some of the old film related history posts from the old blog. If anyone has a film they would like me to cover and can point me in the direction of a copy, then feel free to comment.

The Water Margin - David Chiang (1972) - Ho Sheung Heung, North District

Back to Ho Sheung Heung and the location where Bruce Lee fought Sammo Hung in the opening scenes of Enter the Dragon. Despite taking me several months to locate, it turns out this place was a popular filming spot through the 70s. These days it's still fairly over grown and impenetrable but I still wait patiently for the day when some idiot accidentally starts a hillfire and reveals some lost film artifacts.

In this scene, Yan Ching (David Chiang) has just saved Jade Unicorn from being assassinated by his corrupt guards, and hangs around waiting to rob someone so he can get enough money to go to Liangshan and team up with the bandits. It turns out that the two people he decides to rob are Liangshan bandits.

Tai Shek Mo (Crest Hill) in the background

The Water Margin - David Chiang (1972) - Pak Shek Au, North District

Here we are back at Pak Shek Au near Kwu Tung. It's a favoured filming location for many a 60s- and 70s-made period film thanks to its - then - relatively unspoilt environment. Since those days it has undergone significant change as small industrial sites (and their requisite corrugated iron and steel structures) occupied much of the central area. Although even now, those rather unsitely structures have themselves now been cleared to make way for the start of the much-heralded "Northern Metropolis".

In the scene below, Chao Gai, the bandit leader (played by Tung Lam), has just been ambushed and atttacked by Shi Wengong and is impaled with an arrow before being rescued by Lin Chong (Yueh Hwa).

The area below can be indentified by the presence of a small ridge in the background that has the English name on Open Street Map of "Mt Kirkpatrick" and "Mt Kilpatrick" on older ones. I suspect the older one is the correct name. In front was a flat area with a couple of large ponds that was later utilised for the aforementioned cluster of small industrial buildings as well as the community centre, sports pitch and camp site. Someone took a photo from the Tung Wah campsite which shows Mt Kirk/Kilpatrick in the background. It gives you an idea of how much the place has changed. Also, fans of the genre may be interested to compare the images below with the last image on my old post on The Fate of Lee Khan. It's more or less the same camera angle.

As Chao Gai tries to escape, he rides his horse to the east with a view towards Tai Shek Mo (Crest Hill). You can see a similar view in this shot from The Blood Brothers.

And...finally a view over to the distinctive peak of Ki Lun Shan which can be seen in this image from The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires. In fact, you will see those two shots were taken from more or less the exact same place.

The Water Margin - David Chiang (1972) - Port Shelter, Sai Kung

The Water Margin is a 1972 Shaw Brothers film directed by Chang Cheh. Readers who followed the Alan Whicker posts last year may be interested to know that it is this film that was in production when Whicker went along and interviewed David Chiang and his brother, Paul Chin-pei. There was also some behind the scenes footage seen in that documentary. For those interested, you can watch the documentary (and others) here: What Makes Shaw Run Run?.

The film is supposedly just a small snippet of the full "Water Margin" tale and details how the bandits seek to approach Jade Unicorn (played by Tetsuro Tamba), the fellow student of one of their enemies, in the hope of getting his help defeating him. In doing so they inadvertantly drop him in trouble with the local Imperial court who arrest him for harbouring bandits following a tip off from his adulturous wife and her scheming lover.

I watch this film and scratch my head as to why David Chiang became such a big action star because I don't think I've seen a single film where he has looked good during a fight. He just goes through the motions most of the time, with hardly any power. In this film he plays "The Prodigy", Yen Ching, whose signature fight move is as uninspiring as all his other movies but largely involves rolling around on the ground.

Anyway, the film begins with some ships coming in to shore at the stronghold of Shi Wengong (Toshio Kurosawa), the main protagonist of the film and arch enemy of the Liangshan bandits. The location is, of course, the section of Port Shelter just off the coast from where Shaws Movietown was located. The coastal area you see on film is now the location of the HKUST Fok Ying Tung Sports Centre.

If you look in the near background of the bottom image, you can see a low rocky outcrop behind the soldiers.This is about the only thing that still looks the same, as long as you go at low tide.

Whicker's Orient - Alan Whicker (1972) - Pak Shek Au, North District

As mentioned in an earlier post, Whicker's Shaw episode coincides with the filming of The Water Margin and he heads off to a location shoot at Pak Shek Au to interview David Chiang and his brother, Paul Chin Pei. I've included this location a few times before because it was one of the favourite outdoor locations for many of the period set movies, consisting of a large expanse of low rolling hills. The British Colonial govt used to refer to this whole area as the "North Downs" and it was a popular place for the British garrison to practice maneuvers due to it's complete lack of development. Fear not though, the intrepid current government plans to turn the whole area into its much touted "Northern Metropolis"...

To be fair, it's not the empty hinterland it once was and much of it these days is filled with the usual New Territories detritus of dumped storage containers, recycling factories and heavy machinery parking spots.

Whicker's Orient - Alan Whicker (1972) - Shaw Villa

Part of the interview Whicker conducts with Sir Run Run was filmed in and around his villa, located on the backlot of the studio. Judging by the footage, it doesn't look like Shaw used his swimming pool very much even back then. I really hope it is kept for the new development because I do like the 1960s style of the place.

Whicker's Orient - Alan Whicker (1972) - Shaw Movietown

The third and final installment of Alan Whicker's 1972 foray to Hong Kong is "What Makes Shaw Run Run?" and is an episode based around Sir Run Run Shaw's movie empire and includes interviews with Sir Run Run himself, David Chiang and Paul Chin Pei as well as Betty Ting Pei.

The episode doesn't involve too many different locations outside of the Movietown complex, but there are some good views of the place worth including here, especially now that much of the old site has now been cleared for redevelopment.

The first shot below shows the view looking south east across the plot. The foreground is occupied by a built set on land that is now occupied by the Clearwater Bay school. 

Next up is a good panorama with a view from the west looking directly east. There a lots of details in here that Shaw fans will recognise, for example, the wooden pagoda (left hand side) that appeared in many Shaw productions (see also Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold on this blog). Just below the pagoda you can see the dormitory buildings that also featured in the odd film (see Sunset). Note the aforementioned built set on land now occupied by the school. In the late 1960s, this was the same area where the large temple set was built that can be seen in both The Vengeance of Fu Manchu and The Million Eyes of Sumuru. On the right is a cluster of buildings, including Shaw House, that have so far escaped the wrecking ball, although I haven't been here to confirm how much devastation has been caused. This maybe a job for the summer if I can get off my lazy backside. 

Click for larger image

Next up is a sequence of images from a helicopter go-around that takes in the whole site. For what it's worth, it looks as though Whicker was there during the filming of The Water Margin. It's been a while since I watched the movie so I can't remember if the tents seen in the first images are from that film. All of this dirt area, located at the very rear of the studio site, has long since been taken over by the adjacent Hong Kong Univeristy of Science and Technology (HKUST), mainly for staff quarters. 

The following shots show much of the top area of the site. Sir Run Run explains in one of the interviews that the site was a hill when they leased it and chopped off the top 60ft to make a level plateau to build all the production buildings and sound stages. Sitting right at the edge of the site is Shaw's villa with its famous driveway. He wasn't shy of letting it appear in movies either. 

The final bunch of images from the aerial shots shows the front side of the plot and what is essentially the sole surviving parts of the old site - at least according to the most recent aerial images from GoogleEarth - including Shaw House and the old dormitory buildings (located just down from the pagoda). My understanding is the the redevelopment of this site will include the preservation of Shaw House at the front of the site, but I have no idea what will happen to all the other buildings, including Sir Run Run's old villa. Time will tell, but never underestimate the resolve of a developer who wants to earn a few extra bucks by demolishing old buildings.

The final images for this post include the famous yellow, iron front gates, also featured on a film I covered here, albeit in disguise, as well as some shots from around the site.