Love in Hong Kong - Pauline Teutscher (1983) - Chater Road and surrounds

Here's a few shots of one of the actors walking to his car, parked in front of the Hong Kong Club, but he takes a rather roundabout way of getting there. He starts off near the Supreme Court building with the Bank of China Building in the background.

Next up we see him, as expected, walking through the entrance to Chater Garden.

But then, after Chater Garden, we see him now to the north of the Supreme Court Building and picking up his car in front of the old Hong Kong Club - which was knocked down soon after this film was made.

Speaking of the old Hong Kong Club, note the archways of the club's front portico in the background. As far as I am aware, these arches are the only surviving bits of the old building, and they are now located inside, on the first floor above the main entrance of the current club building. Here's a snap I took a few weeks ago (no, I'm not a member, they would never accept riff raff like me as one).

La Fine Dell'innocenza - Annie Belle (1976) - Connaught Road, Central

After crossing the harbour, the pair are eventually stopped on Connaught Road next to the Hong Kong Club, and a naked Annie makes a run for Statue Square and plunges into the ornamental ponds there to try and escape the police. Note the old Electra/Mercury House on the left and the old Hong Kong Club building. CCB Tower now stands on that site.

Electra/Mercury House on the left, next to it is the old Hong Kong Club

I'll never look at these pools in the same way again

Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong - Jamie Chung (2015) - Connaught Road Central, Hong Kong

Another of the shots that closes the first part of the film is this one of Connaught Road Central. You can see the side of the Hong Kong Club on the left. The green section seen through the overhead road sign is the garden that surrounds the Cenotaph.

Narazumono - Ken Takakura (1964) - The Cenotaph, Central

A further meeting between Minami and the Japanese lady takes place at the Cenotaph in Central. Lots of nice views around the whole area including the elegant former Hong Kong Club. Sadly, Queen's Building had already gone by this time, replaced by the Mandarin Oriental Hotel a couple of years prior to filming.

Black Cobra Woman - Laura Gemser (1976) - Views across the harbour, Hong Kong

Coupled with the initial Kai Tak landing sequence, the opening scenes from Black Cobra Woman also show a little bit of the Hong Kong Island waterfront. Some familiar views here, even if many of the buildings no longer exist. Just in the top image you can see the Furama Hotel, Sutherland House (with the circular BAYER advert), the Hong Kong Club, the Hilton Hotel behind them all and the older HSBC building which have all gone the way of the dodo.

A Queen's Ransom - George Lazenby (1976) - City Hall, Central

Here's a few shots of the area round City Hall. The first shot shows the camera looking west along Connaught Road with the City Hall building on the right hand side. On the extreme left is the lower floors of the Furama Hotel (now replaced with AIA Central building) followed by what was once the home of Cable and Wireless - Mercury House. I'm not sure what year it was demolished but it has since been replaced by the short-lived Ritz Carlton (seen here) and then again by the current building, CCB Tower. Next along is the recognisable form of the old Hong Kong Club building with the Mandarin Oriental Hotel just beyond on the other side of the square.

There is also some archive footage of the Queen visiting City Hall from the harbour side of the building (i.e. what would be off camera to the right in the top picture). 

A Queen's Ransom - George Lazenby (1976) - Central, Hong Kong

A Queen's Ransom is the last of the three films that George Lazenby was obligated to complete after he had signed up to Golden Harvest expecting to work with Bruce Lee back in 1973. It revolves around an assassination plot against Queen Elizabeth II during her famed 1975 trip to Hong Kong. You may remember that the French film, Bons Baisers de Hong Kong, also used this trip as the plot for the film and both that and A Queen's Ransom use archive footage from that trip to establish scenes and follow the plot as the police try to protect their Royal guests.

And so the introduction to this film uses quite a bit of archive footage shot around Central, showing some of the sights and sounds going on at the time. So here are a few screengrabs.

The Road to Hong Kong - Bob Hope (1962) - Hong Kong Club, Central

In a rather weird use of stock footage, the Hong Kong Club is used to establish a shot that was obviously meant to still be in India. I guess this colonial style of building is one that can be found in many of the tropical and sub-tropical places the Brits decided to invade during their empire building. In the film, we see it, and the Cenotaph, from the direction of the southern side of Chater Road near to the Supreme Court building.

Foxbat - Henry Silva (1977) - Queen's Road Central, Hong Kong

Immediately after Garden Road we see the vehicles - in a rare show of movie geographical accuracy - pull out onto Queen's Road Central. This was before the right turn (towards Wanchai) was replaced by a flyover.

This shot actually captures the former Hong Kong cricket ground (closed in 1975) undergoing its transformation into the now rather bleak and overly-concreted Chater Garden, which I believe opened the following year in 1978. Sorry, but in my Western-oriented foreign-deviled mind I am forever destined to associate the word "garden" with things like grass and the colour green rather than a drab grey and a proliferation of concrete. In Hong Kong, as long as it was built using Li Ka-shing's "Green Island" cement than that is about as green as it needs to be.

Anyway, note the very elegant and still standing Hong Kong club in the background. That was to stick around fora few more years before its eventual redevelopment. You can also spot the lower floors of the Furama Hotel at the back. And a little further along the road (see below) we get to glance back and can see the Hilton Hotel as well as what looks like a newly constructed Murray Road car park on the right.

Ein Sarg aus Hong Kong - Heinz Drache (1964) - Chater Road, Central

A while back when I was researching locations for The Million Eyes of Sumuru, I came across a few clips that had been reversed in the editing process. This always confuses me because I never know if it is done deliberately or just out of ignorance. Anyway, it turns out that I think it was done deliberately because those very same clips have cropped up in Ein Sarg aus Hong Kong and (until I find out otherwise) I think they may have been originally shot for this film and then perhaps bought/licensed by the makers of Sumuru as stock footage for use in the latter (and later) film. I'll explain my reasoning in a later post but for the time being here is the clip of the Hong Kong Club from this film (and the correct way round).

L'Inconnue de Hong Kong - Dalida (1963) - City Hall, Central

Well, not really a view of City Hall but rather a view from City Hall. In one of my favourite scenes, one of the actors walks from Edinburgh Place along the open space directly under City Hall before heading out onto Connaught Road.

This passageway under City Hall remains virtually unchanged but there have been big changes around it since including the removal of the Star Ferry terminal with its iconic clock (background of top picture), the redevelopment of both the Standard Chartered and HSBC bank buildings (picture 3) and finally the Hong Kong Club (across the road in the lowest picture). Note the empty space on the right of picture 3 - this is the area that was getting ready to have Prince's Building built on it. It opened 2 years later in 1965.

The Million Eyes of Sumuru - George Nader (1967) - Chater Road, Central

The following screencap is the first of several that have been flipped during the editing process. This has happened in several of the films I've covered on this blog and I just think it boils down to a lack of knowledge on the part of the people responsible for splicing it all together at the end. Not really a big issue for most people, but for me it can sometimes cause a bit of confusion if I am trying to figure out the angle of an image.

Anyway, this is one of the establishing shots that confirms we are indeed in Hong Kong. The shot is along Chater Road looking at the old Hong Kong Club (and what looks like the old annexe building sticking out behind it).

There are a couple of pointers as to why this is flipped, the most obvious is then reversed writing on the vehicle on the far right. But look behind and you can also see the City Hall building in the gaps between the vehicles. Here's how it should look in reality.

According to Gwulo, the Hong Kong Club annexe was knocked down circa 1966. I'd be very surprised if this wasn't stock footage though and not shot specifically for this film at the time. I need to confirm the shooting dates but I was under the impression the film was late 1966. 

Day of the Panther - Eddie Stazak (1988) - Central Harbourfront, Hong Kong

This is the clip that confirms that Trenchard-Smith cheated a bit on the HK footage. The film was made in 1988, but the following screencaps show us this footage was made several years previously.

We have the usual suspects to look at including the Furama Hotel, City Hall, the Mandarin Oriental, Jardine (then Connaught) House. But look closely and you can see some stuff that really shouldn't have been there in 1988. The most obvious is the old HSBC Building (see second pic above the "Exe" of "Executive Producers". This building was demolished in 1984 and replaced by the current Foster designed iconic (but ugly) structure. But actually, there is a building that was demolished even earlier, it's the Hong Kong Club - you can just see it on the far left of the second picture. This place was demolished in 1981. Sadly, my knowledge can't place it any earlier than that, but feel free to comment if you can see a building in there that was knocked down even earlier.

So, I wonder if this was footage that Trenchard-Smith still had from his earlier forays into filming in Hong Kong? It certainly wasn't filmed for the purpose of this movie.

Hong Kong 97 - Robert Patrick (1994) - Chater Road, Central

Well, the view from Chater Road rather than Chater Road itself. We can see The HSBC HQ, one of the MTR exits, The Mandarin Hotel in the background before finally stopping right next to the entrance to the Hong Kong Club.

Shatter - Stuart Whitman (1974) - Around Connaught Road Central

A few shots that I figured were worth combining because they are all really closely clustered around the small area where Edinburgh Place meets Connaught Road.

First we see (albeit a bit blurry in the background) the old Edinburgh Place carpark. It's still going strong as I write but who knows how long that will last. I've stuck a rough comparison after each one courtesy of Streetview.

The next one shows somewhere that has changed. A little further around Edinburgh Place (it's a small loop road that runs around the carpark) is the view of the old Star Ferry Pier which was still there until 2006.

As you can see the view these days is slightly less inspiring and I think most people will agree that HK is worse off now this area has changed.

Next we pop over a few metres to Connaught Road with a view down towards the old G.P.O. We can still see part of the old roof of the subway on the right. The subway is still there of course (though now there is less reason to use it) but the roof has been put back significantly and replaced with a new structure. Also we can see the Mandarin Oriental on the left and St George's Building behind it. Both buildings are still here but the one behind those - Chater House - is a more recent build. The grand old G.P.O was replaced by Worldwide House and this has to be one of the biggest travesties of HK redevelopment because the old building was quite spectacular. There are still some other relics left over at the back but I did a better post on this here.

Finally, the camera turns and we get to see to the east from this point (the last shot is looking west). Another travesty of a heritage preservation as this grand old building, the Hong Kong Club, was removed to make way for the current version. City Hall can be seen on the left along with the Connaught Road end of the car park and the Cenotaph on the right hand side.