Bullet in the Head - Tony Leung Chiu-wai (1990) - Kwai Chung Park

Ben and Jane go for a walk in Kwai Chung Park with a rather decrepit looking industrial building in the backfground. It's the Kwai Wan Industrial Building. It has been cleaned up significantly since the film was made and is now a bright, shiny white colour. On the far left of the final image below is the Wing Loi Industrial Building that still retains its rooftop metalwork and was the location used in Black Mask.

Black Mask - Jet Li (1996) - Wing Loi Industrial Building, Kwai Chung

The roof top of Black Mask's hideout, where he and Tracy (Karen Mok) fight off Yeuk Lan (Françoise Yip), was shot on top of the Wing Loi Industrial Building in Kwai Chung. The steel framework and pipes are still a feature of the roof and in the film we get a fairly decent view of the surrounding area including Wonderland Villas upon the distant hill, the nearby buildings of the cemetery columbarium and Kingsford Industrial Building.

Wonderland Villas top right, the twin blocks of Kingsford Indusrial Building on the left

Kwai Chung Park in the background

The buildings are part of Kwai Chung Crematorium

Wader Studios on Castle Peak Road - Now and Then

Here's another comparison that people might appreciate, especially those who were unaware of the whereabouts of Wader Studios (there have been a surprising number of inaccurracies over the years, most recently in the "World Film Locations: Hong Kong" book by Intellect Books which, weirdly, placed the studios in what I believe is Kwai Chung Park!).

Anyway, this is the view along Castle Peak Road just north of Shek Pai Street. The top image is a merge from the Thai film Aorm Aok Jao Praya supplied to me by my UK based friend AP (who has been instrumental in sourcing many of the films I have used on the blog at his own expense), you can see the original screencaps here. The old studios were replaced by the Wah Tat Industrial Buildings, two blocks of which can be seen on the left of my image below. The Now image was taken back in 2019 when a visiting Lee fan wanted to see where Bruce Lee had filmed the HK studio shots for The Big Boss. Sadly, there is nothing tangible left to show.

Righting Wrongs - Yuen Biao (1986) - Mita Centre, Kwai Chung

Although in the film Biao follows his target into the Great Eagle Centre, the shot of him abseiling down the side of the building - both before and after the killing - was filmed elsewhere. This is where GoogleEarth's 3D rendering of Hong Kong has become invaluable because it "only" took me about 30 minutes of searching to identify the correct building as the Mita Centre in Kwai Chung. Luckily it's still standing otherwise the search may have taken a lot longer. This film shows the building from the north side so here is a Streetview link.

Die Jungen Tiger von Hongkong - Robert Woods (1969) - Former Shek Lei Resettlement Estate, Kwai Chung

Going over some of the old films I've covered, as I often do when pickings start to get slim, and I found this scene from Die Jungen Tiger von Hong Kong that involves some hastily tying up of loose ends in the middle of the film. The scene involves one of the gang's members being killed on a rather large set of steps.

Initially I thought these steps might be the ones in Aberdeen that led up to the Shek Pai Wan estate, but on closer inspection they weren't similar. Anyway, it turns out that these steps were in fact directly opposite Wader Studios and led up to the old Shek Lei Resettlement Estate.

The estate no longer exists and has been replaced by the newer Shek Lei Estate, but the steps are still there and instead now lead up to an open bit of ground that is currently a sports pitch. In the images below you can see that at the time of filming there were buildings there. It wouldn't surprise me if this sequence was filmed at the same time as these other scenes.

Powaqqatsi - Godfrey Reggio (1988) - Wonderland Villas, Kwai Chung

Wonderland Villas actually appears twice in this movie, except the first time it is in extreme closeup that makes identification a bit more challenging unless you are familiar with the building's configuration. The initial appearance is below - it's a fairly drawn out sequence as the camera pans from left to right , taking in the rather long expanse of the building. I believe this is the western facing part of the facade. To be fair there aren't that many developments in Hong Kong that form such a long contiguous structure so it's not surprising that it caught the attention of Godfrey Reggio, the director. The more recognisable appearance towards the tail end of this musical-documentary can be seen at the bottom. In that image we see it from the opposite side, looking across towards Tsing Yi in the background.

Die Jungen Tiger von Hongkong - Robert Woods (1969) - Wader Studios, Kwai Chung

Here's another old location that I was struggling to find but the answer just landed in my lap courtesy of a Thai film I have been watching called Aorm Aok Jao Praya (Thai: อ้อมอกเจ้าพระยา). This location has also been stumping me for a while because it also features as a place where Bruce Lee was photographed during production of The Big Boss and I could never work out where he was, even though it was obviously somewhere in Hong Kong.

Anyway, mystery solved and it turns out this is on the back lot at Wader Studios. I'll put up lots more screen images when I get around to posting about the Thai film I just mentioned, but until then here are the images from this German film from 1969. Incidentally, you may remember that in this film, the exterior part of Wader also stood in for a warehouse in Singapore for this scene.

Die Jungen Tiger von Hongkong - Robert Woods (1969) - Castle Peak Road, Kwai Chung

In an interesting edit though, the next scene (following his release from the station) shows him getting into car supposedly opposite the police station, but was in fact filmed a few kilometres down the road back in Kwai Chung. How do I know this? The background makes for some interesting viewing because not only does it show the first completed phase of the Mei Foo estate (Mei Foo San Tsuen) before the rest of Lai Chi Kok bay was reclaimed to support the MTR construction and Lai Chi Kok Park. The building that looks a Chinese temple in the mid-distance is the 1960's version of the Lai Yuen Amusement Park (aka Lai Chi Kok Amusement Park). You can see the same Chinese-style building in this closer picture courtesy of Gwulo.com.

The combined angle on Stonecutter Island, Phase 1 of Mei Foo estate and the amusement park puts us up in the hills around where the current Tai Wo interchange - where Castle Peak Road meets Wa Tai and Wah Yiu Roads. The open view is now gone though because the park closed in 1997 and has since been redeveloped into various high rise residential blocks including the dubiously named "Nob Hill".

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - Hing Fong Road, Kwai Chung

I was having difficulty reconciling the following image with modern Kwai Chung even though I had a fairly good idea of what I was looking at - Tsing Yi in the background is a bit of a giveaway. The problem was the buildings in the foreground and mid distance. Nothing today matches up, and there's a good reason for it as I have recently discovered. This is also my excuse for not posting it earlier :)

This still is from a sequence in Das Mädchen von Hongkong when Fuchsberger is being attacked in his friend's office. As he dangles from the balcony he looks back and this is one of the views he gets. Now, in reality I'm not sure this was taken from that place (i.e. the Wader studio) but it was certainly nearby as it shows two old Government Housing Estates that have since been rebuilt. In the foreground is the original Kwai Hing Estate built between 1970 and 1972. According to wiki, structural defects were found in the concrete and the whole place had to be ripped down in the late 1980s and the current Kwai Hing Estate is what replaced it.

The estate at the back left is the original Kwai Fong Estate, built between 1971 and 1972, and it too was found to have structural problems leading to its eventual replacement by the current estate. So there you go, two shoddily built 1970's estates. It looks as though shoddy building practices are a long established tradition in HK. Anyway, the road you can see running from the bottom is therefore Hing Fong Road.

Die Jungen Tiger von Hongkong - Robert Woods (1969) - Wader Studios, Kwai Chung

After rarely seeing Wader at all on this blog, it has been popping up left, right and centre throughout these German productions. In this film it is filling in as a freight processing centre in Singapore. The intrepid heroes have blagged their way into delivering a suspect cargo in an attempt to find out what may have happened to Woods' wife. However, Singapore was a bit beyond the films budget and so the crew just headed over to Kwai Chung and stuck a sign on the front of the studio block - much like they did in Heisser Hafen Hongkong.

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - Kwai Chung Factory Area

We've been over here in an earlier post because it was along Wah Sing St where the baddie's warehouse was located. However, I forgot to add these screengrabs that show the view from the building that supposedly housed the murder victim's office.

The "office" had a terrace at the back that looked down onto the area now occupied by the Kowloon Commerce Centre and Roxy Industrial Centre - between Tai Lin Pai Road and Kwai Cheong Road. It's the open area with the bus depot on it in the next picture.

The terrace is interesting though because the view from it implies that it may have been part of the old Wader Studio. Sadly I have very little information about the place but it's possible (seeing as Wader was used in another scene) that this terrace was on the Wader back-lot. I don't think anyone will ever be able to answer this for me so I may have to go and find an aerial shot from the same time to confirm.

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - Wader Studio, Kwai Chung

I mentioned the area around Wader Studio in the last post and part of the old front wall has shown up in this film. It's the only identifiable piece of the studio that I can see (there are likely other bits but because of the general lack of information out there they are most likely going unidentified by yours truly).

Anyway, the giveaway in this shot is the large characters on the gate which are the Chinese name of the Wader studio (華達).

If you want to see where the gate was in relation to another post featuring the studio, then Gwulo.com has a picture that will help.

This last shot of Joachim Fuchsberger was snapped looking out from the main gate back towards Castle Peak Road. The studio closed not soon after this film was made.

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - South China Cold Storage Building, Kwai Chung

The murder victim was running a business from a warehouse in some anonymous part of town. The chronology of events suggests its somewhere near a dock, but actually the no-longer-anonymous location was a real cold storage warehouse located in an industrial estate in Kwai Chung. Coincidentally, the warehouse was (and still is) located behind where the old Wader Studios were - but more about that in a later post.

Anyway, simply plugging the Chinese name (南華冷房大廈) seen in one of the grabs revealed the location. The road that runs by the warehouse is Wah Sing Street.

Looking down from the top of Wah Sing Street

You can see the Streetview grab below. The angle isn't great but it's nice to see that the vertical sign has managed to survive 45+ years (even if it's looking done for).

In one of those geographical conundrums, one scene later in the film has Fuchsberger heading to his friend's office (see below) with the warehouse clearly visible in the background. He is disturbed by the bad guys and what ensues is a chase over the roof tops of Tsim Sha Tsui!

Heisser Hafen Hongkong - Horst Frank (1962) - Wader Studios, Kwai Chung

The year before Horst Frank and Brad Harris filmed Weiße Fracht für Hongkong they were in HK to film another German potboiler by the name of Heisser Hafen Hongkong (English title: Hot Harbour Hongkong). Once again, Horst Frank plays the baddie whilst Brad Harris takes on the role of a HK Police Inspector.

Coincidentally, after only just recently talking about Wader Studios over on Gwulo.com, the building cropped up at the start of this film standing in for a factory in Japan. The exact location seems to be elusive with various places given but I think the theory that the Wah Tat Industrial Centre was built on the old site holds more water simply because the Chinese name of these buildings is the same as the Chinese name for the studio (華達 - Wah Tat).

 The position might be further confirmed by the third picture which shows the opposite side of the Castle Peak Road. The type of stone shown on the opposite bank is very similar to the road bank opposite the factories today - although there has been extensive further excavation to widen the road and also to create the Shek Lai playground.