Asia-Pol Secret Service - Wang Yu (1966) - Nathan Road, Yau Ma Tei

After leaving the airport in the girl's car, there is a rather nice panning shot as the car travels south along Nathan Road at the junction with Gascoigne Road. In the top image the camera is looking north towards the junction with Public Square Street. The small building that looks like a house is actually the old Yau Ma Tei Government School. It was built in 1905 and demolished in the mid-70s - not a bad life span for a building in Hong Kong. The white building on the left hand side, covered in scaffolding, is the Kowloon Government Office building. It looks as though the film captured the building as it was being given its finishing touches as it was opened the same year (it's still there for the time being).

In the lower image you can see the Alhambra building on the right hand side on the corner of Kansu Street. The block of smaller shophouse buildings on the other side of the road was replaced by Honour House and the Hang Shing Building with the old Fortuna Hotel the next building along.

Narazumono - Ken Takakura (1964) - Nathan Road, Yau Ma Tei

Some more of the intro takes us back down into Yau Ma Tei as the car drives by the camera along Nathan Road close to the unction with Gascoigne Road. We'll come back here for a later post but I wanted to show this because you can see what it looked like before a whole load of development over took this place, in particular the West Kowloon Corridor flyover that was constructed approximately where the low rise dirty white building appears behind the bus. The Alhambra building(built in 1960 and still standing) can be seen behind that. The empty site on the right of the screen is where the Kowloon Government Offices now stand.

In the lower photo we get to see what was north of this location and the rather grand building on the left is the former Yau Ma Tei Government School. This was demolished sometime in the 1970s and the site was turned into a playground/basketball court. That's Public Square Street where the two pedestrians are crossing on the left.