Yakuza on Foot - Tomisaburô Wakayama (1969) - Casino Macau Palace, Macau

The Oriental Travel organisation is based in the casino floating in Macau's Inner Harbour - the Casino Macau Palace. I may have mentioned in an old post that the original casino structure started life as the very first Sea Palace restaurant in Hong Kong before being bought by Stanley Ho, taken over to Macau and repurposed as a casino. This was back in the early 1960s. It appears that by the time this movie was filmed in 1969, the original structure had already been replaced by this wooden version, familiar to anyone who has watched The Man with the Golden Gun and other movies from that era e.g. Flatfoot in Hongkong.

Asia-Pol Secret Service - Wang Yu (1966) - Macau Peninsula Panorama

After a brief return to Hong Kong as Wang Yu discovers the gang are in Macau and decides to head there by himself on a small speedboat, we return to the former Portuguese colony and are presented with a different view, this time of the inner harbour area with a panning shot and a rather cheeky caption (similar to one seen in this post as the story kept moving between Japan and Hong Kong). The location of the camera, its height along with the floating casino (Casino Macau Palace) right in front, suggests to me that this was taken from the famous/infamous Grande Hotel (photo of it at the bottom of this post).

Spearhead in Hong Kong - Stafford Gordon (1981) - Casino Macau Palace, Macau

Sgt Bilinski's choice of casino was a bit more limited back in 1981. So, no surprise then that he chose the Casino Macau Palace - the wooden floating casino once moored in the Inner Harbour area. This was the go-to casino for most of the foreign film and TV productions that I have covered on this blog, so rather than repeat myself you can check out these older posts.

Challenge of the Tiger - Bruce Le (1982) - Casino Macau Palace, Macau

The CIA agents' female companion has a contact who sells newspapers at the entrance to the Casino Macau Palace - the original floating casino that once stood (or floated) near Ponte 14 in the inner harbour area.

We've seen it several times now on the blog (Noble House, Flatfoot in Hong Kong, The Man with the Golden Gun) but I'm still clueless as to what happened to it. Feel free to comment if you know.

Noble House (Mini series) - Pierce Brosnan (1988) - Casino Macau Palace, Macau

The floating casino in Macau's inner harbour has appeared a couple of times before on this blog, but usually as the older version that was in service during the 1970's called the Casino De Macau. The version we see in Noble House is the later version that resembles the style used for the Jumbo in Hong Kong (although the latter is not a casino).

The version used in the show was still in use (and might still be as far as I know) although it had been moved from its former place in the inner harbour near Ponte 14 up to the water next to Ilha Verde (aka Green Island).

Jaguar Lives - Joe Lewis (1978) - Inner Harbour, Macau

Over to Macau now for a quick visit and some sights around the inner harbour area including the floating casino, the Kwong Hing Tai Firecracker company building (or at least the back of it facing the water) and a few more places worth mentioning.

In the above screencap we can see Joe surveying the shoreline. The low art deco style building in the centre screen is still around. I don't know anything about it but like its style and can see from Streetview that it is currently housing a company called "Tak Wah". Obviously we don't have "Waterview" yet, so I've had to settle for this land-side image from Streetview. It seems to be a working warehouse still. Incidentally, the building directly under Joe's chin is the former Grande Hotel. We looked at this place a few posts ago in Robert Mitchum's Macao.

The next shot is not a great one for scenery courtesy of the fact that ol' Joe is blocking most of it, but look on the right and you can see Penha Church up on the hill.

The next shot shows the back of the Kwong Hing Tai Firecracker building on the water. This is a great art deco style building and was once the feature of a post on my old blog. I shall resurrect it at some point but until then you can see the waterside rear of the building where firecrackers were loaded off onto boats for distribution. We also have a view of the stylish front courtesy of Streetview again.

Finally, here is the famous floating Casino looking less than splendid thanks to the fact that it was covered in bamboo scaffolding when they filmed this. It was called the Casino Macau Palace and has been seen here a couple of times in the past. It's gone now, but not sure when.

Kung Fu Killers - Grant Page (1974) - Inner Harbour, Macau

Page doesn't only visit HK, he also makes a quick trip over to Macau helping me top up my quota of Macau locations for the year :-)

The first shot we see is of a ferry docked at the Inner Harbour, right next to the famous (and now famously gone) floating Casino Macau Palace. We've seen it a few times before including way back in this post from the Bud Spencer film Flatfoot in Hong Kong. Although this was filmed the year before Flatfoot, I believe.

I believe there has also been some reclamation along the Inner Harbour at Macau and so the exact location of where the casino used to sit is now inland a bit - though not to the extent of some places in HK that are now kilometres away from their previous harbour front locales. Anyway, here is a quick stitch to give a better view.

The Man with the Golden Gun - Roger Moore (1974) - Chaplin in the casino

In another of my Chaplin spotting posts, here he is playing a gambler in the scene where the golden bullet handover takes place in the Macau Casino. Chaplin is the guy with the goatee (he still has the goatee even after all these years) sitting next to Maud Adams (to her left with the brown shirt).

Flatfoot in Hong Kong - Bud Spencer (1975) - Casino Macau Palace, Macau

Rizzo follows Chang Li into one of Macau's former foremost landmarks (I've featured it loads on the blog over the years), the floating Casino Macau Palace. I later found out that the first version of this casino was the original Sea Palace Restaurant, towed over from Aberdeen Harbour in Hong Kong. This larger wooden structure was version 2 that replaced the original (year unknown but sometime in the mid to late 1960s).

The casino was moored on the Rua Das Lorchas around the section where it intersects with Av. De Almeida Ribeiro but was decommissioned sometimes in the 90's, after which I'm not sure what happened to it. Judging from the photos above it was quite nicely built.