Mad Mission 3: Our Man from Bond Street - Sam Hui (1984) - Pearl Court, Beacon Hill

And so, onto the next movie. This time I am, once again, looking at a Tsui Hark movie as part of my current side project. Mad Mission 3 (a.k.a Aces Go Places 3) concerns Sam Hui's jewel thief character, King Kong, becoming embroiled in a plot to steal the crown jewels. It's basically a big huge James Bond parody and even includes a shady British agent of the same name (played by Connery-era lookalike, Jean Mersant).

Kong is in Paris for a heist but is waylayed and eventually kidnapped by said agent who asks him to help get the Crown Jewels back from Hong Kong on behalf of the Queen (played by the same French actress, Huguette Funfrock, who played her in Bons Baisers de Hongkong).

In reality he's being duped to do the thievery on behalf of Bond who is, in fact, an international jewel thief and is trying to sell the crown jewels to an Arab Sheik. Cue lots of really naff humour, some quite laugh-out-loud slapstick and lots of truly poor special effects. Apparently, when Tsui saw the finished product he was truly miffed at how crap it looked but it still went on to be the top earning film of 1984 and broke the HK box office record that year.

Anyway, once the story moves back to Hong Kong, the first thing we see is Karl Maka's Police character returning home.The home in question is not far from me in fact. It's Pearl Court, on Rhondda Road in the Beacon Hill area of Kowloon Tong. It's next door to Beverly Heights, which is famous for being the place where Bruce Lee died.

The Night My Number Came Up - Michael Redgrave (1955) - Kai Tak Airfield footage

Just a quick post to show a brief video (<1 minute) that has been snipped from the longer 1955 movie The Night My Number Came Up starring Michael Redgrave and directed by Leslie Norman (Barry Norman's dad...and why not?). I know I have posted about this before, but it was just screen captures, this time it's the actual footage.Very cool.

Double Impact - Jean Claude Van Damme (1991) - Opening sequence, Various locations

The opening title sequence gives us a different view point though and takes us from west to east. First off we get to see the backside of High West (Lung Fu Shan) as the camera sweeps across and reveals Mount Davis and Kennedy town. Look carefully and you may be able to see the twin chimney stacks of what I believe was the Kennedy Town Abattoir, as well as Green Island and just to the distant hazy left is Kau Yi Chau (aka Han's Island from the B&W composite photo in Enter the Dragon).

Next we move over a little more to the east to just behind HK University and can see various buildings that are still around - not surprising seeing as this film is only a little over 20 years old. For example in the shot below the three buildings at the front bottom are on Po Shan Road and are called Piccadilly Mansion, Hamilton Court and (one block of) Po Shan Mansions, respectively. The tall building top left is Hong Kong Plaza and the three identical blocks on the right are the three blocks of a development called Connaught Garden.

Next as we move along we now look over the harbour. I like this shot because I can actually see where I live (although it's a wee bit blurry) in the far distance. But you can make out the transceiver on top of Beacon Hill (that tiny white splodge on the hill in the back centre and if you know your HK geography you should be able to guess that the next major bump in the ridgeline (to the right) is actually that of Lion Rock.

The camera keeps speeding east (to the right) and this time on the far right we can just make out the Ferry Point Estate a.k.a Man Buildings - they've been around since the early sixties and are fairly recognisable, however, this is a view that can no longer be found because the West Kowloon reclamation has blocked it all off and instead these days you will just be able to see the skyscraper development which has the new ICC as its centrepiece.

I was expecting the skyline to be a bit clearer on this DVD - but it seems as though even back in 1991 (well, actually I think the filming took place in 1990) there was a fair amount of haze over Kowloon. Not as much as today but more than I expected...

Sunset - Paul Chin Pei (1971) - Lung Cheung Road, Kowloon

This scene is the end of the section when he goes to meet his mother and they drive through various parts of Kowloon before pulling in to stop at a sandy quarried hilltop. I can confirm that this sandy little area was just off Lung Cheung Road, about 100 metres west of the famous Lung Cheung Lookout. I live nearby here and have had a jolly good look around and can tell you that although some large boulders remain, the sandy area has long been excavated to make way for various CityU associated dorms and buildings down the hill. However, look at the shot below and you can see the shaved hillside in the background which IS still around and forms the edge of the road immediately north of the aforementioned lookout.

The car almost immediately turns off the road onto the sandy area and this is where the rendezvous between Chin Pei and his onscreen mother takes place. The thing I hadn't realised before is that the famous Checkerboard Hill in the background (you can see a checkerboard at the top of the picture immediately below) actually had two checkerboards. It had one facing south which can still be seen from various parts of Kowloon despite the weather's best attempts (the the Govt's lack of willingness to preserve it) and it also had a west facing one that can be seen in the shots below as well as in this photo over on Gwulo.com. These days it is almost completely covered in tree growth and thus is out of site (but perhaps better preserved as a result?)

Lion Rock at the back

We can also make out various aspects of Kowloon Tong in the background including the barracks.

The west Checkerboard in the background