Police Force - Wang Chung (1973) - Chatham Road South, Tsim Sha Tsui

We switch back to a real location again as the police chase the robbers away and the pursuit spills out onto Chatham Road South. The arched building in the background is St Mary's Canossian College. In the last image you can see one of the Nissen Huts from the Chatham Road Camp.

Mr Hercules Against Karate - Alberto Terracina (1973) - Chatham Road South, Tsim Sha Tsui

The hotel where the boys are staying is the Empress Hotel on the corner of Mody Road and Chatham Road South. There are a few shots done outside the main entrance and surrounding area throughout the film. What I will say is that the hotel interior was not filmed here.

The images below start with a view of the overhanging signs along Mody Road before pulling out to reveal the front of the hotel and its characteristic crowned 'E' symbol. The last image is from a sequence where the camera pointed at the opposite side of the junction and you can see the empty space (Chatham Road Military Camp) of what would become East TST in the background.

Crime Lords - Wayne Crawford (1991) - Empress Hotel, Tsim Sha Tsui

It's only a brief glimpse, but it appears that the hotel the main characters are staying at is the Empress Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui. This was shot just a couple of years before the place was torn down and replaced by Empress Plaza (no doubt the landowners felt there was more money to be made in office and retail space as opposed to hotel rooms). You may or may not recall that this was the same hotel seen in Narazumono about thirty years previously. There's also a brief glimpse of Mody Road as LaGrange (Crawford) tries to chase after Russo (Martin Hewitt).

Yellow Emanuelle - Chai Lee (1977) - Rosary Church, Tsim Sha Tsui

In the final post for this rather location-rich film we have another first for the blog with the appearance of the Rosary Church on Chatham Road South. This is where Emy and George finally get married. For those that don't know this is a small, but ornate, Roman Catholic church built in the early 20th Century to cater for the area's growing Catholic community.

Desperate Mission - Germán Cobos (1965) - Chatham Road South, Tsim Sha Tsui

At the end of Mody Road, the vehicle turns left on to Chatham Road South. It's only a brief glimpse but shows it at the time when there was still a military camp on the east (right) side. The image quality is a bit poor but you can just make out one of the camp's Nissen huts behind the fencing on the extreme right.

Legacy of Rage - Brandon Lee (1986) - Chatham Road South, Tsim Sha Tsui

Phew! Brandon finally catches up with the bus at the southern end of Chatham Road South. The giveaway is the New World Centre behind. All that has now been demolished and replaced by the godawful new K11 malls.

Asia-Pol Secret Service - Wang Yu (1966) - Chatham Road South, Tsim Sha Tsui

Wang Yu stops the car and hears a ticking coming from the back. He suddenly realises the girl has tricked him into the car to be killed when he realises all the doors are jammed shut. The location is between the junctions of Chatham Court and Observatory Road. Some of the buildings in the images below are still around. In image 1, the car is parked in front of the alleyway next to a building with a cantilevered second floor. This is Golden Mansion at 83-85a Chatham Road South. South Sea Apartments behind it is alos still around.

Image 2 shows the opposite side of the road and some of the Nissen huts that formed part of the Chatham Road Army camp - Camp Kowloon. For a reminder of what it looked like, check out this still from Narazumono.

The lowest image shows the view looking north along the road with the St Mary's Canossian College building in the distance. But just before there are two blocks on either side of Austin Avenue. Grandview Mansion and Winston Mansion. Both are still around as I write but the building on the left of frame has since been redevloped into the Popway Hotel.

Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong - Jamie Chung (2015) - Chatham Road South, Tsim Sha Tsui

There are a fair number of nice shots interspersed in the dialogue and as the two are walking back from Hankow Road, just before they head over to Hong Kong Island, we get this brief glimpse of the Cameron centre that stands on the corner of Cameron Road and Chatham Road South.

Narazumono - Ken Takakura (1964) - Empress Hotel, Tsim Sha Tsui

Not to be confused with the Empress Hotel that once stood over in Central, this particular one was located on the corner of Mody Road and Chatham Road South in Tsim Sha Tsui. I'm not sure when it was demolished but building records show that the current building on the site, Empress Plaza, was constructed in 1993.

Actually, this is a great sequence in the film from a location standpoint because it shows the old army camp on the opposite side of Chatham Road South, now the location for the History and Science museums as well as all the other development that has become known as East Tsim Sha Tsui. If you look at the first image, it looks as though there was some sort of religious organisation opposite the hotel which would now mark where Mody Road continues on the other side of Chatham Road South.
In the second image above you can see some of the newly reclaimed land that would eventually be turned into Wing On Plaza as well as the TST Shangri-la Hotel.

The next image below shows the view looking north up Chatham Road South and you can quite clearly see the Nissan huts of the army camp as well as the nicely curved facade of Ocean View Court which is still there (it was built in 1958). There's a brief glimpse of the hotel exterior in the lower two images as the camera is positioned on the opposite corner of Mody Road and pans down to street level.

Kung Fu Killers - Grant Page (1974) - Park Hotel, Tsim Sha Tsui

Okay, not the Park Hotel as we would normally expect to see it, but rather the view from the roof courtesy of an interview between Grant Page and Stuart Whitman. You may remember that Whitman was in town for the filming of Shatter and Page managed to get hold of him for a talk about kung fu. The white buildings at the back correspond roughly with the current HK PolyU buildings, so it's possible they were part of the original campus, however, I'm not certain.

Note the KCR track that still ran from the old terminus in Tsim Sha Tsui and was on the other side of the old Chatham Road Army Camp which is just out of site below the hotel, along Chatham Road (today's East TST area where the History and Science museums stand). Anyway, a big thanks to Thomas once again for identifying the location, but does that mean this is the hotel where Page stayed and where they filmed the bar fight in the finale of Shatter? Still not sure.

Sunset - Paul Chin Pei (1971) - Chatham Road South, Tsim Sha Tsui

One final delve into the Sunset vaults before I move on to the next film. This one is fairly incidental and I wouldn't have bothered for the fact that we catch a quick glimpse of the Park Hotel on the corner of Chatham and Cameron. The view is through a windscreen as well (very similar to this shot from Bons Baisers De Hong Kong) so the view is only fleeting and a bit dark. The hotel (which is still around by the way) is the one with the vertical slats behind the rear view mirror.

Cracker: White Ghost - Robbie Coltrane (1996) - Various aerial shots around Hong Kong

Finishing up Cracker: White Ghost for the time being (at least while I still grapple with some of the harder to identify locations) with this small post showing some of the location seen from the vantage point of the helicopter whilst it's trying to follow the killer.

The first shot is an aerial view of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department HQ. At least that is the building's use now, but considering that the FEHD didn't exist in 1996 - it was created when the Urban Council was disbanded (it was the first volley in the HK Govt's war on democracy) and the councils former responsibilities were split between the FEHD and the LCSD (Leisure and Cultural Services Dept) - I am not sure what it was before hand. I'm sure some of the longer-term HK residents can provide that information. It's the low-rise building on the right. The buildings next to it are (from r to l) the Victoria Centre and the Sea View Estate.

A little further along the Hong Kong Island coastline provides us with our next bird's eye view over Quarry Bay and the two shiny buildings we can see centre screen are two of the office towers of Cityplaza in Tai Koo Shing.

We move back a bit now and over to the HK-side entrance to the Eastern Harbour Tunnel as Dennis' car heads over to Kowloon side. The shot is in B&W because we are supposedly viewing it through the camera on the chopper.

We move over to Kowloon side now and can see a rather difficult to identify junction, however as the camera pans right, following one of the taxis, it becomes obvious that we are looking at the major junction where Austin Road intersects with Chatham Road South. The giveaway is a brief view of the curved staircase outside of St Mary's Canossian College along Austin Road.

And finally we finish with a quick view over Container Terminal's 8 and 7 as the helicopter hovers above the area around Stonecutters Island. Actually, the angle here is quite low as you can see from the distant hillside buildings (in the northern Lai Chi Kok/southern Kwai Chung area) and it wouldn't surprise me to find out the camera crew had simply driven over to Stonecutters (because by then it had joined the Kowloon peninsula) and plonked the camera on one of its small hillocks.
 

Bons Baisers de Hong Kong - Les Charlots (1975) - Park Hotel, Tsim Sha Tsui

The next location is not the best in terms of visibility because the film only shows it from inside a car looking out but it's worth including because it's still around. It's the Park Hotel on the corner of Cameron and Chatham Road South. The hotel was opened in 1961 and so is only one of a few remaining 60's era hotels that is still around.

In the film the car we are in turns into Cameron Road from Chatham Road South so we see the curved front of the hotel and the lower section that fronts that road.

Here it is on Streetview.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Chatham Road South, Kowloon

Many thanks to Arthur for spotting this location by identifying the multi-storey car park seen in the background.

Here is a brief reminder.

For some reason this did look familiar but I just could not place it, but now Arthur has told me that it is in fact a building in East TST called Auto Plaza I feel like slapping my head.

Of course, it is just background to the scene where Pak (played by Tzi Ma) follows a local stripper back to her flat whilst investigating a murder. He ascends to the roof top we see above and spies on her from there.

Sadly the angle is ambiguous and I'm not sure if this roof top was the one on top of the still standing Union Mansion building (built 1966) on the opposite side of Chatham Road South, or perhaps on a building that has since been replaced by Railway Plaza (build date unknown). It's too close to say one way or another but I am erring on the side of Railway Plaza because of the angle on the edge of the car park that we can see.

But anyway, here is a ground level Streetview to show that the car park is still there. You can just see it with a newer paint job peeking through the gaps in the trees.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Chatham Road South, Kowloon

Another aerial shot from Key Witness. This one holds some interest because it shows the land being formed for what became the Science and History museums in East Tsim Sha Tsui. The first picture below gives us a nice angle on the Park Hotel as well - that's the curved grey-coloured building that sits on the corner of Cameron Road. It's one of TST's older hotels, being built in the 1960's, and is still going strong...for the time being at least.

The cluster of buildings on this side of Chatham Road South are still around and host a variety of office and commercial premises. The one most prominent (centre right) is Energy Plaza and fans of 80's HK movies will realise this is the building that Michael Wong was dangling from in Royal Warriors. The upper floors also used to house a gym and training facility patronised by many stars of yesteryear and run by a fellow called Eddie Maher. I'm not sure when it closed down - possibly sometime in the early to mid-90's?

On the right hand side is the bare piece of land that now holds the aforementioned museums. Strictly speaking that particular patch of land now houses the small park that leads up to the museums. I know the History museum moved here in 1998, and considering this aerial view was most likely taken in 1989 or thereabouts I'm not sure why it took so long for the site to be completed. Actually, on second thoughts that sounds exactly like HK.