Dirty Tiger, Crazy Frog! - Sammo Hung (1978) - Ho Sheung Heung

The area where Tiger and Frog are confronted by Panther (Dean Shek), the casino owner, is a familiar one to this site because I was the one who was able to identify for Enter the Dragon. Yes, we're back in Ho Sheung Heung and the "fung shui" hills behind the village. The key giveaway here is the presence of Tai Shek Mo in the background with its recognisable crooked peak (see image 2). Quite a few of the scenes in this movie show a lot of mist/fog/low cloud and this is very typical weather for Hong Kong around Feb/March time.

The Lady Hermit - Cheng Pei-pei (1971) - Ho Sheung Heung

Lady Hermit and Cui Ping don't have to travel far to find exile as they come across some abandoned huts located just around the corner in Ho Sheung Heung. I have a love/hate relationship with this place because it has caused me so much trouble over the years. However, on finishing that little journey of discovery, it turns out that many more films were shot there including The Lady Hermit. It looks as though the huts in the film were built on the east slope of the "middle hill". This will make sense if your read my linked article. In other news, the local village, Ho Sheung Heung, is spending some money to renovate the local road and surroundings and I believe they have recently constructed an access path and  pavilion on top of the third hill on this site. This should give you a reasonable view of the site of this filming to the south. I will report further when it has been completed, so keep your eyes open. In the meantime here are the screencaps.

In Search of Bruce Lee's Last Filming Location

I was recently made aware that one of the extras on the Enter the Clones of Bruce Lee documentary is a small location video tour called Bruce's Hong Kong. The snippet I was sent included the footage of Ching Chung Koon followed by Bruce's fight against Sammo at the beginning of Enter the Dragon and basically saying that the fight scene was shot in a "still unidentified location". 

If only Frank Djeng - the creator of the otherwise informative film - had got in touch. I know my blog stuff here is a bit niche, but the location of the fight has been public knowledge since 2009 when I was first able to track it down. In fact, it was one of my first big location scoops and was what sent me down the path of finding all the other places that make up these (now numbering in the thousands) location pages for Hong Kong-shot movies.

In fact, my old (granted, now deleted) historical blog even had a page called Bruce Lee's Hong Kong on which I detailed a significant number of Lee-related Hong Kong sites. It certainly seems to have been useful to a large number of people coming to Hong Kong and wanting a consolidated list of places to visit. It also formed the basis for some walking tours that I have decided to reinstate here (see the right hand side bar of the blog). Even before that I had written an article for Time Out in 2011 that identified the site. So I am a bit confused as to why it still seems to remain a mystery. Especially since some other information I have documented publicly (such as the appearance of the original Jumbo back in 2011) did make it into that little 'documentaryette'. Well, anyway, regardless of the reasons, it seems like a good idea to revive an old deleted post, from blog v.2 (when I was using Wordpress) in 2009, that detailed the events surrounding the location's eventual discovery. 

Bruce Lee's mysterious last filming location

The Water Margin - David Chiang (1972) - Ho Sheung Heung, North District

Back to Ho Sheung Heung and the location where Bruce Lee fought Sammo Hung in the opening scenes of Enter the Dragon. Despite taking me several months to locate, it turns out this place was a popular filming spot through the 70s. These days it's still fairly over grown and impenetrable but I still wait patiently for the day when some idiot accidentally starts a hillfire and reveals some lost film artifacts.

In this scene, Yan Ching (David Chiang) has just saved Jade Unicorn from being assassinated by his corrupt guards, and hangs around waiting to rob someone so he can get enough money to go to Liangshan and team up with the bandits. It turns out that the two people he decides to rob are Liangshan bandits.

Tai Shek Mo (Crest Hill) in the background

Come Drink With Me - Cheng Pei-pei (1966) - Ho Sheung Heung, Sheung Shui

I believe the final fight of this film - where the bandits attack the convoy after they have been cheated out of their hostage by Drunken Cat - was indeeed shot in Taiwan. The terrain is too expansive to be Hong Kong and the mountains are not those found in Hong Kong. The immediate previous scene though - where the prisoner exchange takes place on a desolate hilltop - was shot in Hong Kong.

I always have trouble finding a suitable name for this location. I usually refer to it simply as "Pak Shek Au", but I'm not sure how much of this area falls under that name. This particular location - the hilltop where the gang leader's prison crate is pushed backdown the hill - is closer to Ho Sheung Heung and I have previously called it "Roy's Hill" (in a since deleted post) because it can be seen in the background of the opening fight scene of Enter the Dragon that features Roy Chiao. This hill is just slightly east of a small cluster of houses called "Phoenix Garden" - once again the Google marker is snapping to nearby buildings, so here is the position is GoogleEarth so you can see where I am referring to. In Open Street Map it's called "Kidney Hill". 

In Come Drink With Me, we're seeing it from its summit (lower two images) as Drunken Cat pushes the cart backdown the hill towards the Governor's troops. At various points of this sequence we catch a glimpse of how unspoilt it once was. Now it's just full of junk, corregated steel fencing, small industrial facilities and much of the site formation work for the first phase of the so-called "Northern Metropolis". I've chosen a selection of images to highlight some of the views.

The west flank of Crest Hill is the back ground in these two images above

The round hillock is called Fung Kong Shan and Yueh Hwa is looking NW.

The distant, grey hills are in Tanglangshan Park in Shenzhen, China

Snake in the Eagle's Shadow - Jackie Chan (1978) - Ho Sheung Heung, Sheung Shui

Here is a location that holds a special significance for me because this is the filming location I was able to "rediscover" after it was seemingly lost to most peoples' memories many years ago. Like many former rural filming spots, the encroachment of modern technology meant many places in Hong Kong were no longer suitable for filming period-set films and, here, electricity pylons were erected along the south slope of Tai Shek Mo in the background. As such it was diificult to film here without having the pylons and associated cables looming into view.

The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires - Peter Cushing (1974) - Pak Shek Au, North District

I must admit to being stumped by this location for quite some time (years probably) and in my talks with various other people, such as Andi (who is much better at this than me), we came to the conclusion that the following area - one used by Shaw Bros on multiple occasions I hasten to add - must be somewhere up in the hills around Sai Kung and Movietown.

However, search as much as I could, I could just never find anything to match the ridge lines in the background.

It wasn't until just the other day that a particular ridge line struck a deeply buried memory in my brain and I eventually managed to finally place the filming location in Pak Shek Au - a small hilly area located between the Lok Ma Chau border area and Castle Peak Road, just down the road from Ho Sheung Heung.

Ho Sheung Heung and its neighbouring hill, Tai Shek Mo, you may remember as being the location of the filming of the fight scene between Sammo Hung and Bruce Lee at the beginning of Enter the Dragon, and it turns out that Tai Shek Mo was also instrumental in me being able to identify this location to. That's it at the back right, seen from the west, in the first picture below.

Now, these days this whole area has greened a lot but has also suffered from the sort of unchecked illegal development that blights much of the New Territories - basically a mish-mash of concreted parking areas, container storage, light industrial workshops, plant hire and other various blots on the landscape. This is a big shame when you see how empty and open it was back in the 1970's.

Now, we already know from some of the great spotting Andi has done that nearby Ho Sheung Heung has been featured in multiple films, including many Shaws productions, and seeing that this place is very close then it's easy to imagine it being a popular spot for filming here. I need to check but I believe there are many Shaws films that feature these same hills and dirt tracks (I'm pretty sure Come Drink With Me is one of these considering the last but one picture Andi has put in this post that shows Tai Shek Mo and its military insignia).

Anyway, mystery solved. Here are some more grabs. The first one shows a hill in the background that I've actually been to the top of without realising it's the same place, it's Ki Lun Shan. Somewhere hidden between there and the actors is the 1970's version of the Castle Peak Road (a much smaller version of the current one, but still a main thoroughfare at the time).

Ki Lun Shan in the background

Finally to finish, a shot taken as the actors walk closer along a dirt road towards Tai Shek Mo. The are you see is now filled with the aforementioned ad hoc industrial workshops previously mentioned. Incidentally, the HK Govt currently has plans to turn this whole area - or at least the nearby part called Kwu Tung - into a New Town. There's lots of opposition but it could be the industrial blight will be replaced by something even worse...

Enter The Dragon - Bruce Lee (1973) - Ho Sheung Heung, Sheung Shui

This is the location used by Bruce Lee for the initial scenes in Enter The Dragon when he fights Sammo Hung.

Those who have read previous versions of my blog will know that the discovery of this 'lost' location was made by my good self as a result of a request from John Little to try and track it down for his In Pursuit of the Dragon documentary. Sadly, it took me too long to find to be included in the final release (it eventually took me two months to track down) but at least Lee fans know that this place still exists and isn't covered by a shopping mall. Sadly, the exact location is unreachable due to the fact that it is buried under 40 years of nature, but perhaps one day a joss stick burning idiot will be paying his/her respects to nearby graves and set the place on fire - it happens a lot more than it should.

This whole area was popular with film makers and many Shaw films were also filmed here and nearby.