International Prostitution: Brigade criminelle - Jean-Louis Broust (1980) - Hanoi Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

Hanoi Road once again (a popular spot) as Dega continues his chase of the fleeing Marcone.

Yellow Emanuelle - Chai Lee (1977) - Hanoi Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

One of the most frequently used streets in this film is Hanoi Road with several scenes shot here, night and day.

Black Samurai - Jim Kelly (1977) - Hanoi Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

As the camera follows Toki around, we see her walking along Hanoi Raod - recognisable by the presence of the Millie's handbag and shoe shop as well as the "Manfa Korean Restaurant".

Desperate Mission - Germán Cobos (1965) - Hanoi Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

Despite heading off towards Part Avenue, in the next shot we see Z55 following Su Ling along Hanoi Road.The big giveaway here is the large "Kam Lung" sign that can be partially seen in the top of the first image. Kam Lung was having a sale it seems.

Kill a Dragon - Jack Palance (1967) - Hanoi Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

A  brief shot of Jack Palance riding in a rickshaw along Hanoi Road. The familiar sight of the Kam Lung Company in the background.

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

A very quick and limited glimpse of Hanoi Road as Fuchsberger walks along it. The road can be identified by the various neon signs that were still in place when Roger Moore came this way in April 1974 to film The Man with the Golden Gun.

You can see some of that signage on this post from the aforementioned Bond film.

Weiße Fracht für Hongkong - Dietmar Schönherr (1963) - Hanoi Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

There is a fair amount of action supposedly taking place inside a bar. I can't remember which one it is (and I don't think it really matters) but at least I can confirm that these are genuine bars that were once situated along Hanoi Road in Tsim Sha Tsui.

We can see signs for the Fairyland Restaurant and Bar and also the May Flower next door. On the left hand side of the screen you can see the partial sign for Kam Lung Co tailors which has featured a few times on the blog before (most notably as one of the shops that can be seen in The Man with the Golden Gun opposite the Bottoms Up club.

Anyway, Doug has a bar card on his FLICKR stream for the May Flower which puts its location at #20 Hanoi Road. But sadly that whole side of the road was razed and replaced by the monstrous K11 development.

The Last Grenade - Stanley Baker (1969) - Hanoi Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

Baker's comrades (which included very young looking John Thaw and Julian Glover) head out to a pub for the night. Unfortunately their nice little drink is disturbed by the enemy (Alex Cord) and they escape out of the front door onto Hanoi Road.

 There are a couple of clues as to the location. The first one is the white sign in the upper right of the lower picture. Look closely and you can see it says "Siu Lam Kung". We've come across this place before courtesy of I Spy. Also spot the sign behind it which mentions "Nancy's Shoes". If you look at the bottom picture of this post (no, I mean the picture at the bottom, not the picture with the bottom!) you'll see that we are in pretty much the same location used in The Man with the Golden Gun. Another confirmation by the fact that the Kam Lung shop is visible in our top picture above.

Anyway, the guys escape in a cab and drive north out of Hanoi onto Carnarvon Road. It's a bit dark, mind you, so not much to see.

Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold - Tamara Dobson (1975) - Hanoi Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

Following on from the beginning of the chase scene at Blenheim Avenue, the bad guy next runs up Hanoi Road. Fans of Bloodsport will remember a very similar scene with JCVD and Forest Whitaker.

If you click through to the Bloodsport link you'll see a Streetview capture of how the road has changed. Unfortunately this is one street that looked much better before redevelopment. The trees and colourful signs have all gone to be replaced by fairly sterile looking glass.

Here are the Cleopatra grabs.

If anyone has any recollections of the shops that used to be here, please feel free to share in the comments.

Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold - Tamara Dobson (1975) - Lyton Building, Blenheim Avenue

At the start of one of those crazy movie chases that start off in one part of Hong Kong and inexplicably jump to another we find our intrepid agents following a baddie from a hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui. Luckily for us the building involved is still around - it's the Lyton Building on Mody Road, but the entrance we are interested in is the side one on Blenheim Avenue.

Our first clue is the image of John Cheung waiting patiently outside with a sign behind him saying 'Chow Bar Kee'. As luck would have it the business as well as the building is still around - this is the Mody House on the southwest corner of the Blenheim/Mody junction, which puts John well and truly in Blenheim Ave.

The next two shots are less helpful despite the Manna Korean restaurant showing us an address on 32B Mody Road. It turns out that the B refers to the fact that this small  business is actually behind number 32 Mody Road, even though its front entrance is on Blenheim Ave.

Not to worry, here is a recent Streetview (captured in 2009 because it was the clearest picture) which shows that the girls were running out of the Lyton Building entrance. The Manna Korean Restaurant was located in the shop with the black front and as you can see the entrance the girls run from has since had some brown tiling put on it.

Of course the clincher though was the next shot which shows our chasee (is that even a word?) running up Blenheim Towards Mody and the junction where several roads meet - Hanoi Rd, Hart Ave, Mody Rd and Blenheim Ave all meet at the odd junction. Look at the background below and you will see the building that used to sit between the meeting point of Hanoi and Hart. We've seen this building before and regular readers may remember it from Bloodsport a while back. Coincidentally, the Bloodsport scene also involved a chase on foot.

I Spy (TV Series) - Robert Culp (1965) - Siu Lam Kung Restaurant, Hanoi Road

Here's one thrown in as an afterthought, but it is a shot of a rather famous restaurant chain (sadly now defunct since circa 2013) that once had a branch on Hanoi Road.

Unfortunately I don't know what the address was on Hanoi Road, and locating it isn't helped by the complete redevelopment that has gone on in that whole area of TST. But, anyway, I thought I would put this one out there because recently Chaplin Chang told me that this was the very same restaurant where he was first introduced to Bruce Lee just prior to the commencement of filming Way of the Dragon in Rome.

So if anyone can give me an exact address it would be nice to know.

Bloodsport - Jean Claude Van Damme (1987) - Junction of Hanoi & Mody Roads, Tsim Sha Tsui

More from the chase, this time just after our last post where JCVD runs down the road, hides behind a car and runs back again (in a northerly direction), the next shot sees him run out of neighbouring Hart Avenue (seen on the right in the screen grab below), to the junction where Hart, Mody and Hanoi all meet up.

Until the redevelopment there was a lovely corner building here (one of several in this area it seems) that housed a shoe shop. Hanoi is on the left and Hart on the right with Mody Road at the bottom of the screen.

If you look up Hanoi on the left, you can just make out the leaves of the previously seen banyan tree. You can see ol' JCVD just at the front of the corner building as he runs past it and stops at the traffic island (see below).

Want to know what sits on that corner plots now? It ain't pretty, trust me...

Yep, there you go, I suspect that perhaps some of the corner building's footprint has been taken up by the need for extra space courtesy of the MTR entrance/exit you can see above, which is why is seems to have even less space now. There are still some relics from prior to the redevelopment, but you have to look up to the far end of Hanoi Road on the left - you'll see that the same buildings still line the road at the far end (it's Carnarvon Road) despite everything else being completely demolished.

Bloodsport - Jean Claude Van Damme (1987) - Hanoi Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

Here is one that was a real toughy for me simply because I have no memory of the area and also because the URA have managed to eradicate pretty much every bit of the older neighbourhood when they constructed the monstrosity that is known as the "Masterpiece" (not really the most fitting of names, in my opinion) which houses the K11 mall and the new Hyatt Regency.

To the rescue comes Michael Tomkins, a former resident of the area, who was nice enough to provide the identification of this one.

This is (as mentioned in the post title) Hanoi Road and it is one of the streets (that still exists) most affected by the redevelopment, but thankfully there were enough clues on screen to confirm the location. First we have the presence of a large banyan tree in its concrete box, followed by some of the businesses that can be seen including the Mayur Indian Restaurant (underneath the one for D'Elysees), the Home Restaurant (blue with red writing on right hand side) and the partially obscured Eddie Siu tailor sign (white at the back).

As you can see from the modern view below...it has ALL gone!! The sole remaining survivor from the redevelopment seems to be Eddie Siu's tailor at #2 Hanoi Road. The big space on the right hand side of the road is where the K11 mall now stands. Notice the structure behind the van in the shot below as well. This is an entrance to East TST station - another thing that has changed the whole area since it was built and one of the most perfect examples of lack of foresight in city planners (they tore down the much more historical and aesthetically pleasing KCR train terminus in 1978 because it was considered useful anymore - the train terminus was moved to Hung Hom a few years earlier and here we are 30 years later with the Govt having to rebuild a TST train station...)

To be honest, I much prefer the character of the area as it was, the new look is just too clinical, clean and generic, and its always a great shame when a big old banyan tree is ripped out for the sake of development.

Anyway, a big thanks to Michael for giving me the identification. More from this part of TST as the chase unfolds over the next few posts...

The Man with the Golden Gun - Roger Moore (1974) - Hanoi Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

An errata and, in fact, even a myth buster. The Man With the Golden Gun was one of the first films I covered on this blog. It has some great locations featured and unfortunately my initial posts utilised screencaps from a not-so-great-quality VCD.

I've updated them just recently with better quality DVD caps (catch them all here) and taken the opportunity to include a couple of places I missed the first time round. However, whilst going over this Bottoms Up post I noticed a glaring error in my location hunting - swayed as I was somewhat by the famous club's last location on Hankow Road.

On revisiting the screencaps I noticed that the club, in the film, wasn't on Hankow Road at all but actually on Hanoi Road. Now, whether the club entrance on film was the real club or a mock up is not really important (the interiors were filmed on stage back in the UK), what is clear is that we are looking at Hanoi Road and not Hankow as I had originally thought. Anyway, here is the post with some better quality screencaps.

The key to identifying this as Hanoi Road is the presence of the Kam Lung Company in the first shot, as well as one of the famous (now removed) trees that used to line the road.

Hanoi Road tree on the left