Summons to Death - Tang Ching (1967) - Hotel Merlin, Middle Road

A fourth pirate brother, Cheung Biu (Huang Tsung-hsun), is responsible for killing all of his fellow pirates for the treasure map and, in a bit of pre-Mission Impossible face swapping, Tang Lui creates a mask of him so he can access his hotel room in town. The hotel in question was the Hotel Merlin located on the corner of Hankow and Middle Roads. This is where the Kowloon Hotel now stands although the Kowloon Hotel takes up the space once occupied by both the Hotel Merlin and the Peninsula Court Hotel. The hotel has appeared briefly on the blog before, although in name only, see the bottom images on this post.

I do remember Chaplin Chang telling me many years ago that Hotel Merlin was where the production offices were based for the filming of Lord Jim whilst the crew were in town for the HK-based scenes.

Enter the Dragon - Bruce Lee (1973) - Hankow Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

My recent posts about Hankow Road reminded me that I had neglected, for many many years, to include this brief sequence from Enter the Dragon. I had posted about the Peking Road section many years back (2011), but for some reason never got around to including this one. So here it is. The location is looking south down Hankow Road towards the junction with Peking Road. The "Copacabana" sign being the main way to identify the location.

The Generation Gap - David Chiang (1973) - Hankow Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

Following an altercation with Cindy's strict father, Ling Xi takes his car out for an evening drive and in these shots we see several images of Hankow Road. We are looking north from the junction with Peking Road. Several signs can be discerned - just about - including the Copacabana bar and Yellow Submarine Bar (the submarine shaped just above right of the car roof).

The Scavengers - Vince Edwards (1958) - Hankow Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

The gang put a plan together to throw the General off their scent by pretending to buy tickets to Manila. This scene starts with Allison walking along Hankow Road next to the Peninsula Hotel before walking into the Peninsula Arcade. The molding next to the window is still on the hotel today exactly where the Hankow Road entrance to the arcade is. What follows is a shot of Allison walking through what I can only assume is the real Peninsula Hotel Arcade as he heads to the Philippine Airlines office inside.

Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong - Jamie Chung (2015) - Hankow Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

A quick leap from Market Street and the pair are already back in Tsim Sha Tsui walking down Hankow Road. Their Kowloon side walk is beginning to look almost as epic as their HK side one.

Felicity - Glory Annen (1978) - Neon Bar Signs, Various Locations

I'm a big fan of the neon signs that were once prevalent along Hong Kong's night streets, so here are quite a few from Felicity.

Pussy Cat Club was on the corner of Fenwick Street and Lockhart Road. Originally just occupying 34-38 LockHart Road, the club expanded to take over the corner plot as well (so, occupying 34-40 Lockhart Road) as can be seen from this grab from Felicity. This site is now the Empire Hotel.

We saw the Diamond Steakhouse sign quite recently as well, so you should now know it was on Lockhart Road on the other side of the Fenwick Street junction (in fact, in that link, you can see the arches of the Pussy Cat Club on the right of the third image).

Club Subway was at 53-55 Lockhart Road. I think that Subway occupied the basement of the same premises as Club Highway. It would make sense given the names of each. We last saw Club Highway during my Spearhead posts.

Staying on Fenwick Street for the next image and it's of the An An Topless Club and as you can see next door was Club Mikado. This little stretch of Fenwick Street was also seen on Golgo 13: Assignment Kowloon.

Last but not least the last image is from a place that is a little more recent in Hong Kong history although it now appears to have disappeared for good. The Bottoms Up Club was on Hankow Road for many years (although for some reason in The Man with the Golden Gun it was moved to Hanoi Road - I am still not sure if this was in reality or just for the sake of the film. I suspect the latter). A few years ago the club moved over to Wanchai (coincidentally, to Fenwick Street) but now appears to have completely disappeared. Its original location, in the basement of a building that stood on the corner of Peking and Hankow Roads, was demolished circa 2014 and a new building, Prince Tower now stands in its place. This new building also has a basement and it's currently occupied by a Starbucks.

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

A nice view of the pre-high-rise Peninsula Hotel as viewed from the harbour. It looks like it was undergoing some renovation of the east wing because all I can see is the fabric cladding that always gets put up when that kind of stuff is going on. To the left is the old YMCA building with the Hankow Centre behind it, and the old Marine Police HQ can just be seen on the far left of the lower picture.

Bruce Lee & I - Betty Ting Pei (1976) - Club Shangri-La, Hankow Road

A long standing mystery has just been solved courtesy of a picture from the always excellent image feed of FLICKR user HT Wong. Whilst tracking down locations for the (admittedly, abysmal) film, Bruce Lee and I, one of them caused a bit of confusion. The location was somewhere called "Club Shangri-La" and the club logo (and Chinese name) was the same as the Shangri-La Hotel chain run by the Kuok family.

The problem was that although the hotel chain had already been established in Singapore in the early 70's, it had yet to open anywhere in Hong Kong. This ruled out the location being part of the proper hotel chain itself but gave no clues as to what the place was. Anyway, after a long wait for more information to appear, it turns out that there was indeed a Club Shangri-La and its sign can be seen in HT Wong's picture of Hankow Road in Tsim Sha Tsui right here.

This is the part of Hankow Road that is to the north of Peking Road. Peking Road is the bit at the bottom of the frame. Pretty much all of the visible buildings in that picture have been redeveloped, but it looks as though the club was located in the basement of the precursor to the Hong Kong Pacific Centre.

I think some of gweilo8888's observations from his research are worth preserving because it's quite possible one of the companies he mentioned in his original comments were behind the club. Here's what he had to say:

...Clearly from the identical font, if there *was* a bar / club / lounge of some kind before the hotel, it would have to be run by a related company. Although the hotel didn't exist as far back as the 1970s, related companies not surprisingly did. (They'd have had to exist in some form before design and construction of the hotel property started, of course.)
The earliest record I could find in the companies registry was for Shangri-La Hotel (Hong Kong) Limited aka 香格里拉酒店[香港]有限公司 (15-Aug-1972). The company itself still exists, but as of 04-Jun-1996 it had become Auto Plaza Limited. That's probably our best candidate. 

Our second-best choice would be Shangri-La Trading Limited aka 香格里拉貿易有限公司 (19-Apr-1974). They never changed name, so I can't definitively connect them to the hotel group -- it could just be a coincidentally-similar name -- and they've long since ceased business.

Anyway, here are the screen grabs.

That's Ho Pak-kwong as the doorman

It's also possible that the company responsible for this club was using the hotel name in a blatant case of trademark infringement. If so, then once the hotel was made aware I am sure the club changed name or closed down. If anyone remembers it, please feel free to chime in.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Bottoms Up, Tsim Sha Tsui

One of Kowloon's former landmarks before closing down and moving over to Wanchai in the mid-00's. Made most famous by being featured on The Man with the Golden Gun in 1974 (although that was then located on Hanoi Road), but its *ahem* cheeky signboard raised more than a few eyebrows back in the day.

The club was located in the basement of 14 Hankow Road until around 2013 when the block it was in (the Mohan's Building, which also housed a service apartment complex called "Han Residence") was  demolished. A new high rise has since been put up in its place and the basement area now occupied by a Starbucks.

I Spy (TV Series) - Robert Culp (1965) - Hankow Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

Here's an interesting shot from No Exchange on Damaged Merchandise. It shows the boys crossing the road to a newspaper vendor with a cinema in the background.

Look carefully in the background and you can just make out the film being shown at the cinema is John Goldfarb, Please Come Home. I don't know when the film was released in Hong Kong but it certainly was first released in the US in 1965, which tallies with what we know about when this show was made. But which cinema was it?

In this case the blue stripes on the building provide a bit of a clue to its identity. It was a cinema called the Sands Theatre in TST, specifically on the NW corner of the junction between Peking Road and Hankow Road. The boys have just crossed the southern part of Hankow Road and Peking Road is the one going across screen behind them on the upper shot.

According to Cinema Treasures, the Sands first opened in 1963, so it was a fairly new venue at this time, and closed in 1980. The theatre was demolished and a new building put up on the site which during my first few years in HK contained an HMV. The HMV has since moved on (twice!!) and the shop now has a large Adidas store there. See below. The angle on Streetview is a fairly good match to the original.

AP provided a nicely put together stitch of the two shots to give us a wide angle view of the same scene.

There's also a nice picture of it on FLICKR but looking down the road from Peking Road here.

I Spy (TV Series) - Robert Culp (1965) - Neon Montage, Kowloon

Okay, not my typical post here and I was struggling with what to do with it because it involves a sequence in the Carry Me Back To Old Tsing Tao episode where we have a montage of nighttime neon filling the screens, made up of multiple locations and identifiable, pretty much, only by the signs themselves. So anyway, I figured it would be fun for some if I put them all up here in one post and say where I think they are and then anyone can chip in and give me any more places they recognise.

Here's the first, which I know - courtesy of the Fourseas, Singer and Rodania signs on the right - features the junction of Nathan and Austin Roads at the northern end of Tsim Sha Tsui. But what about those other signs? Tokyo Night Bar, Tokyo Night Inn? As we locate these places I'll add them to the list of labels at the bottom.

Here is a shot of that part of Nathan Road from the 1960's showing the same signs, but in daylight (Courtesy of the excellent book 香港走過的街道). Incidentally, the building that now occupies the site on the right is still called the Fourseas building and it sits between Austin Road and Tak Shing Street.

Then we appear to move down the road (past the Singer sign) and can see the Pink Lady Bar. I believe the Pink Lady Bar was located on Hankow Road further to the south.

Pink Lady Bar also reveals Dawson & Co behind it and well as Y.K Ma Furniture and Antiques. Can you spot anymore? Where was (and what was) Dawson & Co? Perhaps it was the same tailors that can still be found in HK, if so, where were they located in 1965? Y.K Ma on the other hand seems to be a famous name in the antique business and I found a reference that calls him legendary here. Sadly, my knowledge of this are is non-existent, so if there are any informed antique people out there who know where Y.K Ma's business was based in 1965, please leave a comment.

So what else do we have? Another junction - but this time I'm not sure it's the Nathan/Austin one, perhaps Nathan/Jordan Rd? Anyway, it has the HK Silk Centre along there as well as some signs I can't read.

And then that scene merges with one a bit easier to identify...the Tai Pak Seafood floating restaurant. If you want to read some interesting details of the Tai Pak then go to the comments section of this post I did a few years ago. But this version is unquestionably the one at Aberdeen.

Next up, we have the Kobe Bar, Cherry Bar. After covering Gambit on this blog, I now know that they were actually right next to each other. For proof you can checkout this Gambit post. There also looks to be the (rather dim by comparison) sign for Mandarin Garments at the top right. I've found references to a Mandarin Garments Factory, but this wasn't registered until 1969, several years after this episode was filmed. So where was this one, perhaps Cameron Road as well?

Last but not least we have the final two images showing the New Savoy Bar and the Oriental Pearl Night Club and Bar. Now I have found a reference to both the Savoy Bar (on Granville Road) and the New Savoy Plaza (on Prat Avenue), but no reference to the New Savoy Bar. So information welcome. As for the Oriental Pearl Night Club and Bar - well, the companies register has notes to this place opening in 1964 and closing in 1969, but not mention of the location. However, I was lucky enough to stumble across this photo which shows it next to Rikki's Bar, the latter I believe was located on corner of Cameron and Carnarvon Roads. So it looks like it was on Cameron Road.

Anyway, please feel free to leave comments with regards to the locations, or perhaps even some vague reminiscences of drunken nights spent at these places :-)

Enter The Dragon - Bruce Lee (1973) - Peking Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

Seeing as I was just talking about Peking Road being used in The Protector, here is a shot taken 12 years previously during Enter The Dragon. The scene is from the opening credits when Roper (John Saxon) rides a rickshaw around town. One of the scenes shows him being pulled around the corner of Hankow Road into Peking Road.

It's taken further west along Peking Road compared to The Protector one, but look carefully at the top of the grab and you will see the same Club Tasogare sign that was also in The Protector grab. Here is a snap of my own taken from roughly the same spot. This one was actually taken for a magazine article I did a few months ago but it wasn't used in the published version.

In this case the traffic flow has changed because Hankow Rod and Peking Roads have been split by a pedestrian pavement being inserted into the middle of the former junction. So you can no longer drive straight down either Peking Road from either end without having to turn into Hankow Road (heading either north or south). Strange arrangement but has been there for as long as I can remember.