Dragon's Claws - Lau Kar-yung (1979) - Kai Ham, Ho Chung

The scene where we are introduced to the Dragon Sect's members as they undergo training in the hills was filmed close to a small hamlet called Kai Ham near Ho Chung. Although not shot in the hamlet itself, just up the main road was a flat area marked as a dumping ground on maps from the late 1970s that more or less corresponds to the location so I believe this is what we can see in the images below. The view in the distance is towards the north slope of Razor Hill and just nestled on the left are the smaller hillocks that mark the area where Clearwater Bay Road joins with Hiram's Highway.

Suffice to say the Ho Chung area, including Kai Ham, is much more developed these days and this area we can see below looks to have been abandoned and left for nature to reclaim. Still, it's a new location for the blog that I haven't seen before.

Razor Hill on the right behind Lau Hok-nin's head

Weiße Fracht für Hongkong - Dietmar Schönherr (1963) - Fei Ngo Shan Road, Kowloon

Fei Ngo Shan is the Chinese name for Kowloon Peak. If you ever get the chance to get up here then it is well worth the effort because of the views from the ridge over Kowloon to the south and the New Territories to the north.

The top picture shows the view to the north, taking in a large area of Sai Kung including the Ho Chung valley (the flat bit right of middle), Hebe Haven (the bit of enclosed water just beyond Ho Chung) and Port Shelter and beyond that even further the High Island area before it became a reservoir..

View towards Sai Kung area

The road forms a hairpin bend at this section as it moves from the north side of the ridge to the south, and from here we get the views over to Kowloon. In the top picture you can see pretty much all of the Kowloon peninsula including the Kai Tak runway sticking out into the bay and Stonecutter Island on the other side  (top right). The double-pointed hill between the actors in the second picture is actually Lion Rock with Beacon Hill beyond and to its left. Actually, you can get fairly similar views even today because most of the change has occurred away from the slopes of the hills.

Knock Off - Jean Claude Van Damme (1997) - Shing Fung Studio Lot, Sai Kung

A couple of posts ago I said I thought that perhaps some of the 2nd Unit film work was done in the Philippines, including the large factory building explosion. However, it turns out I was completely wrong. I got an email from the man behind Reel Power Stunts, Jude Poyer, who worked extensively on Knock Off, who told me most of the action was filmed in HK after all...including the factory explosion!

It looks as though the Philippines reference in the credits was related to some of the helicopter sequences towards the end of the film. The aforementioned big explosion however was filmed locally at a place I only really found out about fairly recently: Shing Fung Studio.

Shing Fung is a large outdoor space situated in Ho Chung village in Sai Kung. In fact, I even walked past it earlier in the year on a hike from Pak Fa Lam to Ho Chung and grabbed a snap of the road sign as I passed, not realising it was a fairly well established company.

成豐片場 - Seng Fung Pin Cheung

Anyway, the studio lot is large enough to have erected the following set, and if you click on the company link I gave above you'll see they have several studio buildings as well as a pool for underwater filming and a host of other services.

Jude also told me the place has been used many time before including: Extreme Crisis (1998), Enter the Eagles (1998), King of Comedy (1999), Gorgeous (1999) and Zhang Ziyi's Dining Out Visa Card advert (2001?) and, no doubt, many many more.