Operation Lipstick - Cheng Pei-pei (1967) - 6 Fei Ngo Shan Road, Kowloon Peak

The baddies hideout is represented by the exterior of a property that used to stand at 6 Fei Ngo Shan Road. I thought this may have been a model until I came across it recently in Karate from Shaolin Temple. This film shows it from more or less the same angle as that film, but in much better picture quality. Sadly, this version of the property underwent some renovations in the 1990s/00s and then was completely demolished and replaced quite recently, so sadly is no more.

Anyway, this is where the gang and their boss are based and serves as the location for the rooftop finale as the girls fight off the gangsters from a studio-built replica of the roof.

Operation Lipstick - Cheng Pei-pei (1967) - Shaw Movietown Main Gates

Any self respecting Shaw fan will recognise these gates immediately. They're the main gates at the front of the old Movietown complex and are as iconic as the curved canopy of Shaw House. This shot was obviously taken from the driveway of Shaw House. As far as I know the gates are still installed in the same place but obviously everything is still up in the air as to what will become of the site. Go see them while you still can. Or perhaps some rich fan can buy them and restore them for posterity?

In this scene we are supposed to be at the main gates of the gang leader's house.

Operation Lipstick - Cheng Pei-pei (1967) - Clearwater Bay Road, Sai Kung

In a scene following the discovery of the statuette contains the microfilm, the main characters head back into town to inform the police. Their car is stopped at a junction between two roads.

This scene was filmed at the junction between Clearwater Bay Road and Hiram's Highway. This area now has multiple lanes criss-crossing each other but, as you can see, back in the mid-60s (and later) it was a simple T junction with Clearwater Bay Road heading off to the left and Hiram's Highway curving down the slope towards Sai Kung. It looks like there was a roundabout here but that was just a grass island separating the up and downhill lanes of Hiram's Highway.

Operation Lipstick - Cheng Pei-pei (1967) - Port Shelter, Sai Kung

Following a big fracas on the Star Ferry (a studio set) as the baddies attempt to steal a statuette they believe contains the professor's microfilm, the statuette is tossed over board and Lee and Zhang leap in after it. 

The next day they can be seen drying off aboard a fishing junk out in Port Shelter. Their exact location is on the north side of Sharp Island next to where the public pier is now located.

Operation Lipstick - Cheng Pei-pei (1967) - Shaw House, Clearwater Bay

A familiar sight to any Shaw fan worth their salt is the front of the old Shaw House building with its curved concrete canopy. Shaw House has often stood in for other locations in a variety of Shaw productions and co-productions (examples: The Million Eyes of Sumuru, Shatter) and in this movie it serves as the front entrance for the Silver Dice Night Club where the gang are stationed and where Lee (Cheng Pei-pei) is offered a job.

Operation Lipstick - Cheng Pei-pei (1967) - Sea Terminal, Tsim Sha Tsui

Old readers may remember this post from several years ago that described the "Sea Terminal" in Tsim Sha Tsui - a sort of temporary (from 1962 to circa 1969) point of disembarkation for ship passengers prior to Ocean Terminal being completed. In Operation Lipstick this is the location where Lo Tin (King Pai-chien), the trusted associate of Dr Au, is supposedly about to trade the doctor's secrets but has his wallet lifted by Chan Er (Lee Kwan) just prior to the handover.

Gwulo has a very good image of the Sea Terminal here showing you how it looked. The location has now been subsumed into the Royal Pacific Hotel and Towers.

Operation Lipstick - Cheng Pei-pei (1967) - Tai Mo Shan Road, Tsuen Wan

In case you weren't convinced that the previous location was Route Twisk, the next shot of the kidnap truck shows it turning off Route Twisk and up Tai Mo Shan Road. You can barely make out the words of the road sign but this junction looks quite similar even today despite all the extra tree and vegetation growth covering the hillside. Here's a GoogleEarth comparison.

Operation Lipstick - Cheng Pei-pei (1967) - Route Twisk, Tsuen Wan

The next movie comes courtesy of Celestial's Youtube channel (@ShawBrosCinema) which has put up several videos of their remastered Shaw Bros collection that I assume have not yet been picked up  by anyone for license/release. A big shout out to Will Kouf of SilverEmulsion.com who made me aware of the channel via his Bluesky account.

The film is a comedy starring Cheng Pei-pei (RIP) as a night club singer who is embroiled into James Bond type intrigue as a gang kidnaps a a scientist in an attempt to get hold of the plans of his ground breaking science invention.

The opening exterior shots of this movie involve the doctor's car being hijacked despite its police outrider escort. These scenes were all shot along Route Twisk - the former military road that snakes across the west and north slopes of Tai Mo Shan, Hong Kong's highest mountain. The modern views of these sections of the road are so covered in trees that it was quite hard to find the exact locations, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

The Lady Hermit - Cheng Pei-pei (1971) - Ho Sheung Heung

Lady Hermit and Cui Ping don't have to travel far to find exile as they come across some abandoned huts located just around the corner in Ho Sheung Heung. I have a love/hate relationship with this place because it has caused me so much trouble over the years. However, on finishing that little journey of discovery, it turns out that many more films were shot there including The Lady Hermit. It looks as though the huts in the film were built on the east slope of the "middle hill". This will make sense if your read my linked article. In other news, the local village, Ho Sheung Heung, is spending some money to renovate the local road and surroundings and I believe they have recently constructed an access path and  pavilion on top of the third hill on this site. This should give you a reasonable view of the site of this filming to the south. I will report further when it has been completed, so keep your eyes open. In the meantime here are the screencaps.

The Lady Hermit - Cheng Pei-pei (1971) - Pak Shek Au, North District

As Cui Ping runs after Miss Leng we are treated to some expansive views of one the the Shaw production's favourite exterior locations: Pak Shek Au in Kwu Tung. As mentioned in previous posts, this once large open area filled with rolling hills was often utilised courtesy of its large open spaces and ease to get to - it's located just north of the Castle Peak Road as it passes Sheung Shui on the way towards Yuen Long. Back then it was perfect due to its remoteness from modern Hong Kong but fell out of use during the 1980s when development in Hong Kong, and Shenzhen over the border, began to make period filming more difficult. Lots of modern infrastructure started popping into view. The area is currently undergoing huge change as the HK Govt forges ahead with its "Northern Metropolis" development - building large high rise residential blocks on part of the area that can be seen in the images below. I saw a news report on what they have planned for this place and I doubt there will be anything left in about 10 years time. It's quite sad that this area, despite a small bit of subsequent development, has retained a certain amount of beauty, and the HK Govt and its developer friends are determined to replace it all with modern construction.

The Lady Hermit - Cheng Pei-pei (1971) - Shaws Movietown

Given that last year saw the death of Cheng Pei-pei, I thought I would watch The Lady Hermit. It was one of the final few films she made in Hong Kong before retiring and moving to the US in the early 1970s. 

The movie centres around a young female martial artist, Cui Ping (Shih Szu), who is on a mission to hunt down the famous/infamous "Lady Hermit" in order to convince her to teach her kung fu. Little does she know that said Lady Hermit is living incognito as a maid at the company of Cui Ping's family friend. Being young and headstrong, Cui Ping insists on taking on the town bad guys and eventually has to be rescued by Lady Hermit and soon guesses her identity. The two then leave in exile to improve their skills before returning to fight their arch enemy, the Black Demon. There's a little bit of a love triangle thrown in with the presence of Lo Lieh who both women are quite smitten with. 

There's not so many locations to see, but the ones we have will be recognisable to most avid Shaw fans, starting off with the obvious: Shaws Movietown.

The current state of the old Movietown site is that most of the interior sound stages and production buildings have been demolished (during the second half of 2021 while we were all in lockdown), leaving a big flat open area surrounded by the perimeter buildings that remain. Shaw's old villa is still around, as is Shaw House at the front and the more modern office building that was immediately next to the main gate. I believe the old dormitory buildings are also still around. I do have a bit of insider information which is that the development company that bought the site now want to sell it again. It appears that the HK Govt has imposed a bunch of requirements on the development (such as the retention of several buildings - though I don't know for sure which ones) that made it difficult for the company to go ahead carte blanche. So it looks like the site will remain as is for the time being unless some sort of compromise can be reached.

Anyway, suffice to say the town and building shots throughout this film were shot on the Chinese town set at Movietown. This post gives me a chance to show off my terrible Ms Paint skills because I have taken a recent aerial snap via GoogleEarth and overlayed where these locations used to be. Apologies in advance...

The arrow points north. The red circle at the top left indicates the location of the pagoda set with the wooden bridge (green line) leading away from it. The yellow area is the location of the original Chinese town set and the blue line inside it shows the "river" that has the small ornate bridge crossing it at the lower right hand end of the line. All the other buildings to the top and left of the old site are part of the HK University of Science and Technology. 

Shaws remained inside their original plot for all of the 1960s with the exception of this temple set, built on the site of the Clearwater Bay School. I've not marked it on the aerial image but that's the building at the lower left. The temple occupied what is now the open area in front of the school (seen here in Black Mask). 

Starting in the 1970s, Shaws began utilising more of the area surrounding the original site (e.g the aforementioned pagoda and large bridge sets, more Chinese style street sets etc). All of this land has now been taken over by HKUST which makes me think that, perhaps, Shaws may not have been supposed to build there in the first place? If any film historians know better, please feel free to comment.

Here are the screencaps for a few of the scenes. The first is the small stream and bridge (in the film, it stands in for Baijiang town where the Black Demon is extorting the local population). On my aerial image above this is the yellow area and the river/stream is the blue line running through the middle of it. You may also remember it from other films such as Come Drink With Me, The Blood Brothers, The Million Eyes of Sumuru, etc.

The pagoda set, seen in the finale, was, as indicated on the aerial image, located just past the Shaw Dormitories. Perhaps this image from Whicker's Orient is a better illustration. The bridge that Shih Szu runs across to get to it was indeed located next to it. The bridge area was later expanded to include a more permanent wooden construction seen in many a Shaws movie later on. Although in the image below, she is running away from the pagoda, which is behind the camera. This area is now basically all taken over by the HKUST Business School. I have no idea if you can just rock up and walk around. The campuses here started to get strict on entry policies following the 2019 protests. No harm in giving it a try though.

It's funny, but this bridge scene appears to have been the inspiration for the similar scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It has very similar vibes (i.e. obviously a model) and at one point we can see little dolls falling into the water (no crocs here though). Check it out...

Aaaaaaaargh....*plop*

Come Drink With Me - Cheng Pei-pei (1966) - Ho Sheung Heung, Sheung Shui

I believe the final fight of this film - where the bandits attack the convoy after they have been cheated out of their hostage by Drunken Cat - was indeeed shot in Taiwan. The terrain is too expansive to be Hong Kong and the mountains are not those found in Hong Kong. The immediate previous scene though - where the prisoner exchange takes place on a desolate hilltop - was shot in Hong Kong.

I always have trouble finding a suitable name for this location. I usually refer to it simply as "Pak Shek Au", but I'm not sure how much of this area falls under that name. This particular location - the hilltop where the gang leader's prison crate is pushed backdown the hill - is closer to Ho Sheung Heung and I have previously called it "Roy's Hill" (in a since deleted post) because it can be seen in the background of the opening fight scene of Enter the Dragon that features Roy Chiao. This hill is just slightly east of a small cluster of houses called "Phoenix Garden" - once again the Google marker is snapping to nearby buildings, so here is the position is GoogleEarth so you can see where I am referring to. In Open Street Map it's called "Kidney Hill". 

In Come Drink With Me, we're seeing it from its summit (lower two images) as Drunken Cat pushes the cart backdown the hill towards the Governor's troops. At various points of this sequence we catch a glimpse of how unspoilt it once was. Now it's just full of junk, corregated steel fencing, small industrial facilities and much of the site formation work for the first phase of the so-called "Northern Metropolis". I've chosen a selection of images to highlight some of the views.

The west flank of Crest Hill is the back ground in these two images above

The round hillock is called Fung Kong Shan and Yueh Hwa is looking NW.

The distant, grey hills are in Tanglangshan Park in Shenzhen, China

Come Drink With Me - Cheng Pei-pei (1966) - Shaw's Movietown, Clearwater Bay

It wouldn't be a Shaw movie if the Movietown set didn't appear at least a few times. In Come Drink With Me there are at least two recognisable (to me) spots in the old Movietown lot that have been used. The first is when we are initially introduced to Cheng Pei-pei's character, Golden Swallow. I'm not sure how convincing this disguise is given how stunning Cheng Pei-pei was, but in the shot below she is supposed to be disguised as a man, and this is how the bandits first encounter her. The location is the small bridge which can also be seen on this blog in The Million Eyes of Sumuru and Bons Baisers de Hongkong. It's interesting to note how the buildings surrounding it had changed from time to time.

The second location I want to show will be quite familar to regular readers because it is the large temple set that was used many times during the 1960s. In fact it has appeared at least twice on this blog as well because it was used in The Vengeance of Fu Manchu and The Million Eyes of Sumuru. In Come Drink With Me, this is the Buddhist temple operated by a corrupt Abbot who is in cahoots with the bandits. The bandits are using it as their hideout and have Golden Swallow's brother captive there.

In terms of its location on the Movietown site, the temple was constructed on the area that is now occupied by the Clearwater Bay ESF School site. You can see the site (lower left) was later (early 70s) turned into another Chinese town set, but it looks like the temple building was kept and incorporated into that new set.

Come Drink With Me - Cheng Pei-pei (1966) - Kowloon Peak

I've been doing these IDs on an adhoc basis (normally I have them all lined up and ready to go) and hadn't realised so much was being filmed up around Kowloon Peak, so apologies for multiple posts featuring locations that are all quite close to each other.

The following image is still part of the opening caravan scene as the troops are making their way to wherever before being ambushed. In the image below you can see the start of the higher ridgeline that ends in Kowloon Peak proper. I believe this section is called "Elephant Hill".  The lack of a road and presence of only a path indicates this is a little further east of Fei Ngo Shan Road. There is a flat piece of ground where the path still contours the side of the hill. 

A few later images appear to show the area further around the bend (i.e. in the above image, off camera to the left) where the ambush scene was filmed. In those shots you can see the same part of the hill in the background. It's hard to pin an exact location here because this area is now quite overgrown as well as having an electricity pylon built on the site - no doubt the flatter topography was conducive to its construction.

Jade Faced Tiger (Chen Hung Lieh) on Kowloon Peak

This final image shows the view looking more or less due east from the same area. On the right, in the far distance, just behind the man halfway down the slope, is the distant peak of High Junk Peak in Clearwater Bay. All in all this scene involves some careful framing to exclude much of the modern development that would have been visible to the actors and crew.