Mad Mission 3: Our Man from Bond Street - Sam Hui (1984) - Hollywood Road, Central

This one was a bit easy thanks to the very obvious address on the "Kim's Gallery" signboard (it says 5 Hollywood Road in case you can't quite read it). This whole block is now taken up by the Chinachem Hollywood Centre. That's the top of Pottinger Street in the last couple of images.

Bloodfight - Yasuaki Kurata (1989) - Man Mo Temple, Hollywood Road

A brief view of Man Mo Temple precedes the scene where the gang beat up a stall owner before her daughter turns up and kung-fus them all.

Bamboo Gods and Iron Men - James Iglehart (1974) - Hollywood Road, Hong Kong

As mentioned in the previous post, the pair exit "Cat Street" and head into the "Yue Po Chai Curios Store" on the corner of Hollywood Road and Ladder Street. This place is quite popular for filming. In fact we were here just a few months ago during the exploration of locations for Blade in Hong Kong. And remember, this is the same location (but not the building) that served as the "Nam Kok Hotel" in The World of Suzie Wong.

Blade in Hong Kong - Terry Lester (1985) - Ladder Street, Sheung Wan

After a tour bus chase (a location I haven't been able to identify yet), the bad guys run into the antique emporium on the corner of Hollywood Road and Ladder Street. The sequence starts with a view of the junction of Ladder/Square Streets as Blade loses sight of the baddies. He asks a young passerby - "Half-time" - and after some haggling learns they had entered the shop. This same location also features at the very end of the film as Blade goes back to see Half-time in front of the Man Mo Temple.

So we see Square Street, Ladder Street, Hollywood Road and Man Mo Temple. The first five images are from the initial chase scene, and the lower ones in front of Man Mo Temple are from the end of the film. 

Blades runs onto Ladder Street from Square Street

Back onto Square Street after failing to catch the bad guys inside the shop 

Kam Ho Mansion in the background is still around

Asia-Pol Secret Service - Wang Yu (1966) - Man Mo Temple, Sheung Wan

Wang Yu takes a visit to Hong Kong's most filmed temple on Hollywood Road, Man Mo Temple. It's there where he notices someone has followed him and so he returns the favour.

La Fine Dell'innocenza - Annie Belle (1976) - Hollywood Road, Sheung Wan

This should be a familiar location for anyone who has read any of my old posts. It's the junction of Hollywood Road and Ladder Street. It first appeared in The World of Suzie Wong way back in 1960 as the location of the "Nam Kok Hotel", but has cropped up multiple times since thanks to the proximity of the Man Mo Temple next door. As you can see by the screencaps, the current bulding was already there back in 1976 with its familiar circular moon door entrance.

Love Circles - Michelle Siu (1985) - Hollywood Road, Central

Ko-ko goes for a shop and walks past the Tai Wo and Company antiques shop at 64 Hollywood Road. It's still there as far as I know unless it has fallen victim to the pandemic measures in Hong Kong.

Tokyo Gang vs Hong Kong Gang - Ken Takakura (1964) - Man Mo Temple, Hollywood Road

Another of the locations the taxis drive past whilst Chang follows Kitahara is the Man Mo Temple. It's only a brief, in-car shot. 

The Black Dragon's Revenge - Ronnie Van Clief (1975) - Man Mo Temple, Sheung Wan

Man Mo Temple actually makes two appearances in this film. Its main role is of the interior of the temple/kung fu school where "Bruce" is supposed to have studied. The interior of the temple is used for all the scenes involving the students training and talking inside with their master. If you're wondering why it looks so spacious, it's probably because it is missing the large rack of incense coils that normally hang from the ceiling. All the exteriors for the temple/school were another location that I have yet to find.

However, the temple forecourt also shows up later in the film as the training ground for a kung fu master who claims to have killed Bruce with his deadly fists and two of the students go to his school to challenge him to ascertain whether or not he has the power/ability to have done what he claims (spoiler: no).

Anyway, the first few images show the Man Mo Temple interior as the inside of the good guys' kung fu school and the lower images obviously show the mentioned challenge fight. The funny thing to see in these images is all the locals sticking their heads through the railings to watch the filming. I guess the location manager for this film was on holiday that day.

Lupin the 3rd - Shun Oguri (2014) - Central Police Station, Hollywood Road

The second and last post of our brief coverage of Lupin the 3rd as the Interpol Police Inspector (played by Tadanobu Asano) calls a meeting with the Hong Kong Police in order to plan his raid on The Works' headquarters.

It's just a very brief shot of the stone facade of the former Police HQ on Hollywood Road before switching to an interior filmed, I assume, somewhere else although I have yet to visit here to confirm one way or another. Given that the last post was most definitely stock footage, I'm going to assume this shot was as well. I doubt there was any proper filming taking place here for this movie.

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - Central Police Station Compound, Central

I'm sticking with the Central Police Station (now Tai Kwun) for the next episode, Blind Bargain. This is the episode adapted from the un-aired pilot that co-starred Alex Davion in the original Chief Inspector role.

Various descriptions on the web say that the pilot was a cut down version of this episode, however, the way the characters interact and the way the story plays out in this episode, it looks to me more likely that this episode was constructed from the pilot footage with extra pick up shots inserted to pad the episode out to its 50 minute length (the original pilot was only 30 mins). An example would be the friendliness between Taylor's and Davion's characters that implies a close friendship despite the fact that for this episode, Davion is supposed to be a quick replacement brought in to fill in for Lloyd Bochner's usual 'Neil Campbell' character whilst the latter is away in the UK giving evidence in a trial.

So that I don't repeat myself too much, I've already updated the Pilot locations with a tag that also identifies them as locations for this episode, so the locations I'll include here are the ones that weren't in the pilot. In this case it is footage of Rod Taylor driving his car up the access ramp into the Police Station compound from Hollywood Road and then circling the central car park.

This exact same sequence was reused for the very last episode, The Runaway, a well.

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - Central Police Station, Central

One of the main locations for the on-screen dialogue between Evans and the Police Chief, throughout this whole series, occurs on the police station studio set. However, the establishing shots for these scenes were filmed at the real life Central Police Station on Hollywood Road, with Taylor driving his signature white sports car up the main entrance and then around the central courtyard/carpark area.

This place is now open to the public and you can rad more about it here.

Harry's Hong Kong - David Soul (1987) - Ladder Street, Sheung Wan

In general the quality of the available online versions of Harry's Hong Kong is fairly low and has prevented me from really getting into the details of various street-level locations, but here is one that many people should recognise. It's the section of Hollywood Road where Ladder Street crosses on its way up to the mid-levels. You can't see the Man Mo Temple, but the corner building antique emporium (Yue Po Chai Curios Store) doesn't appear to have changed very much over the past 30+ years. The building it is in is the Tai Hing Building. This was the replacement to the older tenement building that featured (as an exterior only) as the Nam Kwok Hotel in The World of Suzie Wong. That older building was replaced by this one in 1967, so this "newer" one is already more than 50 years old. It's sobering to know that Nancy Kwan, who celebrated her 21st birthday whilst filming that movie, turned 80 this year!

Anyway, I think that's about the lot from Harry's Hong Kong. Time for another quick break before tackling the next movie.

Challenge of the Tiger - Bruce Le (1982) - Man Mo Temple, Sheung Wan

Man Mo temple appears in the sequence showing the bad guys going about doing their business.