Hong Kong 73 - Yueh Hua (1974) - Monmouth Terrace, Kennedy Road

Chan goes to find his car after the friends borrowed it and turns up to find it is a wreck and about to get a ticket. This scene was filmed on the service/petrol station layby off Kennedy Road where Monmouth Terrace stands. The structure with the windows on the right of the top image is still there and is the service station building. Behind the policemen is a road sign that says "Monmouth Path". The path starts just behind them and goes down to Star Street area in Wanchai.

Painted Faces - Sammo Hung (1988) - Tung Chi College, Kennedy Road

Our first film of 2022 is a film that I only recently saw, relatively speaking, seeing as it was made back in 1988 and I remember seeing clips of it during Jonathan Ross's now famous episode on Son of the Incredibly Strange Film Show featuring Jackie Chan (filmed circa 1989).

Painted Faces (the Chinese name is 七小福 - chat siu fook - the name of Jackie Chan's former opera troupe, remember them?) supposedly details the daily life of the opera troupe beginning from when Jackie joins them in the early 1960s. Sammo Hung recreates his real life master, Yu Jim-yuen, and the savage beatings they all took when they did stuff wrong or were caught being naughty.

In reality, I believe the opera school was located in Yau Ma Tei in Kowloon but, for the film's setting, the production crew instead utilised an old disused building located in Wanchai.

The building's address was #6 Hau Fung Lane, although later the official address of the place appears to have been changed to 15a Kennedy Road. This weird discrepancy in locations is because it was one of several multi-storeyed buildings/houses that were constructed next to the steep and high terrace that supports Kennedy Road in the Wanchai mid-levels. All these buildings had entrances on Kennedy Road on their top floors (such as the two doors away - #15 - that appeared on this blog previously as a ballet school in Emmanuelle 2) as well as entrances on their ground floors in the steep area behind Queen's Road East. This building had a long staircase connected the top floor with Kennedy Road and I believe this is the one that can be seen in image 3 below.

According to the information on Gwulo.com, the building's former identity was as a Japanese-owned hotel called the "Chitose Hotel" before the war but was later taken over by Tung Chi College circa 1946. One of the comments provides some more recently taken pictures of the site before it was completely annihilated. That link shows it was also used for a film called Shogun & Little Kitchen (伙頭福星 1992) showing it was still around a few years after Painted Faces. In fact, if you keep scrolling on the link, you'll see the author also had already identified the location for Painted Faces as well (using much better Bluray screencaps as well) and so had beaten me to it by quite a few years. Sadly I wasn't aware of this when I started looking. Such is life.

I'm not sure when the building was demolished (historical captures made on Google Streetview in 2009 show it to have already gone) but the whole hillside was cleared to make way for the very controversial Hopewell Centre 2 project that is still dragging on over 10 years after it started. The sole survivor of this redevlopment process (because there was an public uproar when it was threatened) has, so far, been the nearby Nam Koo Terrace which can actually be seen in the background of one of the screencaps below.

This was the lower ground entrance to the college

The building viewed from Hau Fung Lane

Nam Koo Terrace can be seen in the background, left of frame

View of the terrace from the path that runs up from Ship Street

Looking down from the terrace. This path still exists, for now.

Les Nuits Rouges du Bourreau de Jade - Carrie Ng (2010) - Kennedy Road, Central

On the way to their destination, the car drives along Kennedy Road with the BoC Tower in the background. The angle on the building tells me this was the section of Kennedy Road that runs above the large conservatory in Hong Kong park.

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

A quick one here that had me stumped for some time but after revisiting the film and paying a bit more attention to the surrounding frames of film I can confirm the location of the old mansion (it stands in for an Italian hospital in the film) was at 32 Kennedy Road on he site now occupied by a residential building called "Kenville".

Pay close attention to the building in the right hand side background because that is the rather modern (for 1966/7 anyway) looking side of St Joseph's College on the north side of Kennedy Road (#7).

The problem I had in identifying this location is that the road shows a distinct large curve (see third picture) around the front of the property. This curve has gone and the road it leads to can actually be seen in this post. It's the small driveway that leads around the back of Kennedy Apartments. All the other buildings along this strip of Kennedy Road date back to before the film was made which only left #32 as the potential and it was also confirmed to me in a brief shot (taken from that last scene I just linked to) as the guys are running down the steps to escape arrest at their hotel. I didn't include the shot here (because at the time it didn't seem important) but it shows a car waiting foir them at the bottom of the steps and lo-and-behold in the background is the same crumbly wall also seen in picture 3 above.

So there you go, another mystery solved and a brief glimpse at the old mansion that used to sit at #32 Kennedy Road.

Unfortunately I can't find anymore information about it, so if anyone can remember the place from pre-1973 (i.e. before Kenville was built) I would love to hear about it.

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

A quick trip back to Kennedy Road for this last Sumuru post (for the while, at least, while I try and get help identifying some other more obscure places).

After Nader and Avalon find a recently murdered girl in their Italian hotel room, they quickly scarper out the back entrance and into the hands of British Intelligence. The small alleyway they run down is actually a narrow link between Kennedy Road and MacDonnell Road and pops out onto Kennedy Road not far from the location of this earlier post.

The road on the left is a small road that runs up behind Kennedy Apartments at 34a Kennedy Road (and leads to South Garden Mansion) and the brick wall at the back is a retaining wall for the ground floor carpark/terrace of a development called Seaview Mansion. here is a modern view courtesy of Streetview.

The vegetation on the left is obscuring the wall of Kennedy Apartments but judging from other pictures I've seen the wall remains the same except for glass bricks being put in the wall openings. I also get the impression that the pathway has been widened. Looking at the modern picture you can still see the slanted stone steps on the left side of the path and the right hand side looking much more level. I think this portion of the steps, added where the concrete block with drainage holes is on film, was probably created when the neighbouring section was redeveloped into its current building, Kenville (built 1973). Actually, most of the buildings along this section of Kennedy Road seem to date from the 1960's with the exception of the relative "new boy" just mentioned.

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

After mentioning a hard-to-trace car park where the previous chase scene starts from, I ran into a bit of luck only a short time later and managed to track it down to a building on Kennedy Road. Here is the scene in question, it's when Nader leaves the night club and his associate is suckered into stopping to help a man lying on the road before being kidnapped. 

It turns out that this building - which looks like a low rise car park on film - is still around and is called Chenyu Court. It was pretty much brand new when this film was made (built in 1965) and has had surprisingly little done to it since then. The problem I had was that Google's excellent and very useful Streetview is currently having a problem with this location in that whenever you try to go there it throws you back onto MacDonnell Road. I've reported it but decided to head over this morning and take some of my own pictures for a change. The results are below. In the film we are still supposedly in Italy, and some Italian signs were put up to try and convince us as such.

The curved wall below is also still there and part of the boundary wall of the lower building of St Paul's Co-Educational College that fronts this part of Kennedy Road. I couldn't quite recreate the same angle without risking being run over.

I also wandered past Chenyu Court and confirmed that the parking lot seen in the film is this one as well. Sadly the grill was down so my view was a bit restricted, but I think you can see that it hasn't changed at all in the last 50 years.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Kennedy Road, Hong Kong

Another reused spot for this series, this time we see it from the other direction though as a car is followed around.

This above section is just next to 42 Kennedy Road (see the link I put in at the top), and other than a bit of extra tree growth really hasn't changed that much since.

A short hop later and we are next to the Kennedy Apartments at 36B. Again, not much has changed around here, thankfully, as you can see courtesy opf Streetview.

Emmanuelle 2 - Sylvia Kristel (1975) - 15 Kennedy Road, Wanchai

This building is a bit of an enigma and now that it has been demolished and seems to be mistaken as being part of Tung Chi College. However, courtesy of the ever helpful 'C' we can set the record straight here with the information he provided over at Gwulo.com.

15 Kennedy Road was the residence of WOO Hay Tong (胡禧堂), the father of the late WOO Pak Chuen (胡百全, lawyer, ExCo and LegCo member). After the Woo family moved out, the house was the location of an art exhibition in 1987, and was the set of some films in the late 1980s. WOO Hay Tong was murdered by his nephew in 1932, and the content of his will is found in the Dec. 1, 1932 issue of the Hongkong Telegraph. It is interesting to note that he wanted his estate to be invested until 21 years after the death of his last surviving children and grandchildren who were born before his death.

Indeed, it looks as though the building was also featured in films during the 70's as our post here confirms. In Emmanuelle 2 it is the location of the ballet school where Emmanuelle visits the daughter of her husband's friend to invite her out. It's also where...*ahem*...well, best not to go into that here :-o

Sadly, the spot where this (and its neighbour, 15a) stood are simply empty spots with wooden hoardings hiding what was probably once part of their hillside foundations (what you can see on film is the upper floor of the building -  the rest of the building was underneath following the downward slope of the hillside). I believe they have been demolished as part of the never-ending site formation for the new Hopewell Centre. Big shame.

It could be wishful thinking on my part, but I believe the distant tree in the current Streetview grab (to the left and back of the large central one) might be the same one Sylvia is walking underneath in the first screencap. Getting closer reveals some common features.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Kennedy Road, Central

In addition to the excellent bit of spotting Arthur did for us on this previous Kennedy Road post, he has also pulled out all the stops to identify a very obscure (to me, at least) piece of the same road that actually features a few seconds after the sequence from the previous post - another case of geography being manipulated in the film world.

Anyway, the location is just down from the...wait for it...Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Yes, that is the full name for the administration offices that now sit at 42 Kennedy Road - a site previously inhabited by a Govt quarters building called The Hermitage (though it had the address: 75 MacDonnell Road).

Anyway, the lens on the film camera makes the steps appear much closer than they are, so even though the following Streetview was taken closer to them, they actually appear much further away.

Once again, many thanks to Arthur for his help.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Kennedy Road, Central

Another spot by Arthur, so many thanks to him for helping me out. Funnily enough though I went past here just yesterday, completely unintentionally, and agree that not much has changed, if anything. I would have taken a  picture for myself but I was speeding past in a taxi.

The scene is from the first episode called Power Play and the location is, supposedly, near to where Bruce Payne's character, Eden, lives. I still need to nail that place as well, but in the meantime here is Kennedy Road.

Here is the Streetview, unfortunately the camera angle is too close to see the whole area.

The only difference I can see is that a concrete wall has been constructed so that the street numbers of the apartment blocks up this small road can be seen.

Incidentally, this is the same spot that cause so much trouble for me (in terms of identification) when I was looking at The Million Eyes of Sumuru.