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.

Come Drink With Me - Cheng Pei-pei (1966) - Fei Ngo Shan Road, Kowloon Peak

This image shows the cutting I have referred to previously, where the road crosses the ridge from one side to the other. The district boundary runs along the road here so the group are moving from Sai Kung District into Wong Tai Sin District. It wouldn't surprise me if King Hu just turned his camera around at this spot to film this earlier view. Once again, Google maps is messing with my marker locations so the one below is not where I placed the pin (click on the location at the bottom of the post). It's close enough but this is a recurring issue I have with Googlemap pins, especially so in more remote locales.

Come Drink With Me - Cheng Pei-pei (1966) - Fei Ngo Shan Road, Kowloon Peak

Continuing on Kowloon Peak, the next shot clearly shows the view along the Kowloon ridgeline towards Beacon Hill in the distance. The two-pronged peak just before Beacon Hill is, of course, Lion Rock. You can see a very similar view here, in Heisser Hafen Hongkong. The group of actors would have been standing near the cutting where the road crosses from one side of the ridge to the other.

Come Drink With Me - Cheng Pei-pei (1966) - Tai Lo Au, Kowloon Peak

Welcome to one of my favourite Shaw films, the 1966 Wuxia classic that helped establish King Hu as one of the top directors of the genre as well as launching a 19 year old Cheng Pei-pei into film stardom. Wikipedia states that the film was shot in Taiwan and Shaw Brothers studios, but to my discerning eye I can also see several scenes were shot elsewhere around Hong Kong's then unspoilt and spectacular New Territories - these days the NT looks more like someone's scrapyard, unfortunately.

The plot revolves around a band of ruthless bandits who have taken the Governor's son captive and are holding him hostage in order to effect a prisoner exchange for their captive leader. The Governor dispatches his daughter, the Golden Swallow (Cheng Pei-pei), to capture the bandits, but despite her martial prowess she is eventually overwhelmed and is only able to avoid defeat with the help of the mysterious Drunken Cat (Yueh Hwa aka Elliot Ngok) - a beggar who has his own agenda but one that is closely linked to her success.

The opening scenes show a caravan of troops making its way through the hills before being ambushed by the bandits and the Governor's son being kidnapped. I've managed to identify some of these scenes as being in Hong Kong, starting with this initial shot of some seemingly empty hills.

The view in the image below is taken from Fei Ngo Shan Road looking approximately northeast. The small track running alongside that hill (Tung Yeung Shan) is now part of Stage 4 of the Wilson Trail. In the middle distance is a prominent hilltop that marks Buffalo Pass. There's a very close approximation of this view (though not exact) in this photo uploaded to GoogleEarth. So I think the camera was placed somewhere on the road where Fei Ngo Shan Road moves from the north (Sai Kung) side of the ridge, to the south (Kowloon).