To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - St George's Building, Central

Ng's right hand man, Wan (Waisee Lee) goes to the travel agent to book tickets for him and his family to Canada when things get a bit hot. The angle on the top image could only have been taken from the ground floor of the St George's Building in Central. I have no idea if there is/was a real travel agency in there.

Love in Hong Kong - Pauline Teutscher (1983) - Connaught Place, Central

Julie's office appears to be located inside the former Connaught Centre (now Jardine House), but judging from the tiny interiors I think it's safe to assume the interior scenes were not filmed here and it was used for establishing shots only. 

What I find interesting in my nerdy brain is the fact that in the second image you can see Henry Moore's "Oval with Points". According to wiki, this is "cast 3" of the sculpture but I can tell you it has since been moved to Exchange Square and the sculpture now in its place at this location is another Moore called "Double Oval".

Supermen Against the Orient - Robert Malcolm (1973) - Central Harbourfront, Hong Kong

Talking of the Central Harbourfront as we just were, the next film to be given the blog treatment is a 1973 Italian production with the name of Supermen Against the Orient, although its Italian title is Crash! Che botte... strippo strappo stroppio. The film centres around a US Agent (Malcolm) sent to Bangkok and then Hong Kong in search of some kidnapped compatriots. Given the fact that the film was shot in both places I find it a bit strange that more wasn't made of Hong Kong as a backdrop. As it turns out most of the best locations appear in the rather choppy opening credits, so the next few posts will feature these. Starting with the Central waterfront.

The picture quality means there's not much to make out, but we do get some closer helicoptered shots around Jardine House (then called the Connaught Centre).

The base of the building still shows signs of construction, although this may have just been the concrete garden/water features being built rather than the building itself (which supposedly opened for business in 1972).

Meteor - Sean Connery (1979) - Connaught Road, Central

The tsunami strikes Hong Kong Island after it washes away most of the Yau Ma Tei typhoon shelter. The first place it hits here is the waterfront between Jardine House and City Hall right smack on top of the Edinburgh Place carpark.

A Queen's Ransom - George Lazenby (1976) - Central, Hong Kong

A Queen's Ransom is the last of the three films that George Lazenby was obligated to complete after he had signed up to Golden Harvest expecting to work with Bruce Lee back in 1973. It revolves around an assassination plot against Queen Elizabeth II during her famed 1975 trip to Hong Kong. You may remember that the French film, Bons Baisers de Hong Kong, also used this trip as the plot for the film and both that and A Queen's Ransom use archive footage from that trip to establish scenes and follow the plot as the police try to protect their Royal guests.

And so the introduction to this film uses quite a bit of archive footage shot around Central, showing some of the sights and sounds going on at the time. So here are a few screengrabs.

Stoner - George Lazenby (1974) - Central, Hong Kong

Stoner, also known as The Shrine of Ultimate Bliss, is the first in a series of three films that George Lazenby completed under contract to Golden Harvest. I already covered one of the three a while back (The Man from Hong Kong). What happened was that Lazenby had been to Hong Kong to sign on for the original Game of Death when it was still in pre-production with Bruce Lee. Lazenby was there to work with Bruce and my understanding is that The Man from Hong Kong was originally intended to be a Lee vehicle as well (as was Robert Clouse's Golden Needles which was also originally meant to star Lazenby). Sadly, Lee died whilst Lazenby was on his HK trip (he was supposed to be meeting him the night he died) but Raymond Chow being Raymond Chow made the ex-Bond star honour his recently signed film contract and the end result was Stoner, The Man from Hong Kong and finally, A Queen's Ransom.

This film also ties in with the documentary Kung Fu Killers because Lazenby was interviewed by Grant Page on that documentary whilst in the process of making this film and some BTS clips from it are included.

Despite being largely set in Hong Kong (as well as some shots in Sydney), there are surprisingly few locations to be found and most of the key scenes were done in the studio. But here is a brief shot of the Connaught Centre (as it was known then) as the Hong Kong establishing shot.

The panning shot finished looking over to the Mandarin Oriental and Furama Hotel (in the background). Ooh and before I forget here is another view of  some of the same buildings but from the vantage point of the harbour.

Spider-Man: The Dragon's Challenge - Nicholas Hammond (1979) - Jardine House, Central

The finale of the film takes place on what would have been the territory's highest structure at the time, the Connaught Centre, now renamed Jardine House. We get some great views from the top looking down onto the neighbouring roads, as well as a rather impressive shot or two of some intrepid (and sadly anonymous) stuntman crawling up the side of the building.

But first some establishing shots showing the area around the building including the various piers we saw in earlier posts.

Vehicular ferry pier bottom left

Blake Pier

Blake Pier and the later version of the General Post Office. Star Ferry at the back

The GPO and Jardine House next door.

Can you see the small dot on the side of the building? It's our intrepid stuntman, attached by wires to a cradle at the top of the building. We get a close up as well which reveals the concrete finish on the building before it was clad with aluminium tiles.

Definitely not Nichloas Hammond!

Once at the top, Spidey uses his radio transceiver to try and locate his buddy. Cue some rather spectacular views from the top of Jardine House.

The Man from Hong Kong - Wang Yu (1975) - Central Waterfront

Some scenes of the Central Harbour front as the hand glider moves over to the island. Prominent in all the screen caps is the Connaught Centre (now Jardine House) which Grant Page mistakenly refers to (in his rather entertaining memoir Man on Fire: A Stunt of a Life) as the 'Conodcentre'. Anyway, apparently this particular flight was launched from the Mt Austin area of the Peak before doing a nice big circle of the building.

There are some brief glimpses of various buildings including the Furama Hotel, Hutchison House, City Hall and the old version of HMS Tamar and below we can just see the tops of both the Mandarin Oriental Hotel as well as Prince's Building.

Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold - Tamara Dobson (1975) - Connaught Centre, Central

These days it's called Jardine House but when it was originally built in the early 70's it was called tjhe Connaught Centre and was Hong Kong's highest building. In fact it was Hong Kong's very first official skyscraper. I must admit that I had no idea the central walkway system (or at least the part around here) was also quite so old. Anyway, see for yourself.

Look carefully and you can just see the Furama Hotel in the background with its signature round restaurant at the top and top of the Mandarin Oriental on the far right. This means we are looking from the west to the east, so here is a reasonable comparison courtesy of Streetview.

I'm a bit curious about the green metallic walkway in the screen grabs. First glance makes it look like a precursor to the modern glass version you see in the Streetview capture, however, I suspect that this may have been the conveyor belt from the harbourfront to the General Post Office - carrying bulk mail from the office to and from the post office boats. Can anyone confirm?

That Man Bolt - Fred Williamson (1973) - Central Waterfront

Here's another great shot from the film.

Hang on...wait a sec...oh no ....arghh! They've done it again!

I'm beginning to think I'm living in a parallel universe. Here's the correct view after flipping horizontally.

This view is quite good because it shows us where the angled Blake Pier was in relation to the Connaught Centre (still with scaffolding at the top), as well as the pale low-rise former Central Fire Station (now replaced by the Hang Seng HQ) with the vehicular ferry piers in front of it.

That Man Bolt - Fred Williamson (1973) - Western Harbour views

Some views that aren't reversed are shown over the opening titles as the camera pans anti-clockwise from Kowloon over to the island. A great view of Yaumatei Typhoon shelter including the Ferry Point Estate at the bottom of the screen. The typhoon shelter as we see it below is completely gone with all of that waterfront area reclaimed into West Kowloon and much of it now part of Olympic Station.

As the camera moves left we can see Stonecutter Island in its former isolated glory - now completely attached to mainland Kowloon courtesy of the container processing terminals around Lai Chi Kok.

Followed by a view over a relatively undeveloped waterfront around Central and Sheung Wan. The square building on the waterfront just left of centre is, I believe, the car park that still sits next to Rumsey Street. The area to the right of it became the Shun Tak Centre but at the time of filming was still a very low rise Macau Ferry terminal (we will see it close up in a later post). The ferry piers to the left were the variouys outlying island piers I believe with the Central vehicular ferry pier being the double pronged pier on the left. The piers area has been moved north over the years (i.e towards the camera) and of course the vehicular pier was removed in the 1990s.

The title sequence ends with a Macao hydrofoil heading away from HK with the western end of HK Island in the background and Green Island.

And a nice shot of the under construction Connaught Centre (now Jardine House) to round it off. This makes me think that this film was filmed pretty much around the same time as Enter the Dragon or perhaps slightly earlier as Connaught Centre in the latter film appears to be more complete.

Roaring Fire - Hiroyuki Sananda (1982) - Victoria Harbour

On his way to the gangster's hideout, Joji (Sanada) grabs a boat and goes speeding through the harbour. This was in the early 80's before much of the reclamation that is evident today and so we have a fairly unfettered view of Connaught Road, or at least the buildings that line its southern side.

These days there are several hundred metres worth of reclamation blocking the view.

This first screen capture above shows the white General Post Office in the background - at a time when its northern side still fronted the harbour. Behind it just peeking out is the circular windowed Jardine House (previously Connaught Centre). At the far right is a row of buildings ending in the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce. Most of these buildings are still around including the art-deco C.G.C.C.

As the camera pulls out we get a wide angled view of the same area. The low-rise cream-coloured building behind the ship's mast is the old fire station. This was demolished and replaced the the Hang Seng HQ.

For those with a keen eye, you might also notice the Marine Office with its small tower. We got a closer view of this place at the beginning of the film - another great looking building that has fallen victim to redevelopment. Now the site of Infinity Plaza.