The Head Hunter - Chow Yun Fat (1982) - Devil's Peak

Yuen's former comrade, Kam (Philip Chen), has been tasked to kill him and lures Yuen to the old battery on Devil's Peak in an attempt to carry out the hit. However, Yuen is savvy and rocks up to the meet with a handgrenade which kills Kam's sidekick, but allows Kam to escape. The textured concrete surface in the images below is the concrete sides of Gough Battery (built in 1913).

The view back towards Devil's Peak

Police Story - Jackie Chan (1985) - Devil's Peak, Lei Yue Mun

After being framed for murder and then being chloroformed, Ka Kui wakes up on some remote hillside. This is a great shot because we get to see a plane making its approach to Kai Tak from the harbour-end of the runway, with Mount Parker in the background. Timed to perfection. As we see the wide angle shot of Ka Kui's surroundings (lower image) we get a glimpse of a mid-80s Chai Wan. The massive empty patch of reclaimed land on the opposite shore is where Heng Fa Chuen was constructed (and opened the following year in 1986). 

There is an old battery emplacement on the top of Devil's Peak, constructed to defend the eastern approach to Victoria Harbour and Chan used this a couple of years earlier for a shot of the pirates' hideout in Project A. 

Ferry to Hong Kong - Curt Jurgens (1959) - Junk Island (Fat Tong Chau), Tseung Kwan O

Here is a real piece of forgotten history that took me a while to figure out. There is a sequence in the film when the ferry, after suffering a severe amount of damage in a typhoon, is struggling in to shore when a boat load of pirates - led by a very young Roy Chiao - come aboard to rob and pillage. As the boat is nearing the coastline we get a nice view of what looks to be an uninhabited island in the background.

Now, believe it or not but the strip of land in the background isn't actually an island at all, but is in fact the Lei Yue Mun headland, and the bumpy bit just behind the boats sail is Devil's Peak! Here is a modern day comparison of that ridgeline so you can see for yourself.

What you need to bear in mind here is that this area of Hong Kong has seen a vast amount of change with a huge amount of reclamation. I believe in the first shot we can see Junk Island (aka Fat Tong Chau) which has since been joined to the mainland (in this case with the Clearwater Bay peninsula) by reclamation, much in the same way that Stonecutter Island has been 'attached' to West Kowloon.

The shoreline we see above, in the fourth picture, was most likely part of the old coastline before reclamation took it away and replaced it with the Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate.

Project A - Jackie Chan (1983) - Devils Peak Fort, Lei Yue Mun

On the hill in the far eastern part of Kowloon is Lei Yue Mun a small settlement that ,marks the last bastion of undeveloped coastline in urban Kowloon. Geographically it is the closest point between Kowloon and Hong Kong island and as such marks the easternmost entrance into the harbour. It's proximity to the Island is underlined by the fact that in 1941 during the Japanese Invasion, this part of Kowloon was the last to be abandoned by Indian troops as they fought a rearguard action against the oncoming Imperial Army.

Devil's Peak - the hill which sits above Lei Yue Mun - has always been militarily significant and as such has had some sort of outpost on it ever since people were living here. Even before the British came along and built a concrete fortress up there, it was used by pirates as a lookout post simply because it offered a great eastern view out to see and incoming ships could be seen many miles away.

This latter fact doesn't seem top have escaped Jackie Chan when he used it as the pirates lookout in Project A. Here is a grab of the pirates looking out of the windows of the old fort.

Anyone who has hiked up here should be able to recognise the slanted viewing ports that line the fort wall on the eastern side of Devil's Peak. Here is a shot I took a few years ago (now you know how long I have been putting this stuff off for) albeit taken from the other end looking back towards where the camera was positioned.