The Head Hunter - Chow Yun Fat (1982) - Ngau Tau Kok, Kwun Tong

As Vickie and her cameraman do some more investigation into the mysterious goings-on at the film company, they install themselves on a nearby rooftop to do some reconnaissance with their binoculars. The location was a building located at 367 Kwun Tong Road looking towards Ngau Tau Kok MTR station. The area has changed, as you would expect, and the building they are on has been replaced by a residential building called the Lai Yue Building. Having said that, the large industrial building in the first image (it looks like two buildings because of the different facades) is still around. It's the Meyer Industrial Building - owned by the famous cookware company. The second image shows Ngau Tau Kok MTR station.

Desperate Mission - Germán Cobos (1965) - River Jordan Nullah, Kowloon Bay

It does appear that much of the car chase was filmed along various points of Kwun Tong Road, however, this small snippet below is interesting enough to include separately because it shows a piece of infrastructure that seems to have disappeared into the mists of time.

The shots below show Agent Z-55's escape vehicle driving alongside a nullah (in Hong Kong this term refers to what is essentially a former natural waterway that has been concreted for easier control). This was the River Jordan that flowed down from the Kowloon hills, through the Jordan Valley and emptied into Kowloon Bay. This road doesn't appear to have a name but at the time connected Kwun Tong Road with the nearby Jordan Valley Resettlement Estate.

The nullah is actually still around. The aforementioned resettlement estate was demolished and the site now holds the Jordan Valley public swimming pool, and the nullah - now called the Jordan Valley Channel - can still be seen running along the north side of the site. However, it disappears underground by Choi Ha Road and on some maps is marked as continuing under Ngau Tau Kok Park, then under the Kowloon Bay MTR Depot, and then continuing onto somewhere near Sheung Yuet Road. I can only imagine it continues under here until it discharges into Kowloon Bay, but if any local engineers out there know any better please feel free to comment.

For some modern day context, the junction with Kwun Tong Road seen in the last image below - where Kwun Tong road bridges the channel - was located at the point where the footbridge from Exit A of the nearby Kowloon Bay Station now stands.

Desperate Mission - Germán Cobos (1965) - Yet More Kwun Tong Road

The police still can't catch Agent Z55 so they send up a helicopter to help. The initial aerial images after the chopper takes off is of another part of Kwun Tong Road. The following is looking south from above the old "Garden Estate" (since redeveloped from the low-rise buildings you can see in the bottom left corner into a huge high rise estate). The building in the background with the ramps along the side was the old Kwun Tong bus depot. That site is now occupied by Millenium City 1. The two petrol stations lower centre frame (2nd image) were replaced by Ngau Tau Kok MTR station.

As the camera pans right, the 3rd image shows the old Grandeur Factory Building. This was still around until quite recently and was quite recognisable thanks to the model plane shop that occupied the ground floor called World Models Manufacturing Company and had two large model jet planes attached to the top of the first floor canopy. Anyway, it's now gone and has been replaced by "Boton Technology Innovation Tower".

Next up is a big mess of white.The building in front was called Mong's Industrial Building, but I don't know what the building behnd was called. That whole block now contains Ricky Centre, Nina Hotel Kowloon East and Kinox Centre.

The final image shows the building that sat on the corner of Hung To Road and Lai Yip Street, this was until last year (2022) the Tsui Wah Group Centre. Tsui Wah being a famous local restaurant company. It's now gone. But look next door and you can see the low-rise Lay Yip Street substation and next to it the still standing (for now) H.S. Chan Building at 4 Hung To Road.

Bus Depot and Petrol Stations 

Grandeur Factory Building

Mong's Industrial Building in front

Desperate Mission - Germán Cobos (1965) - More Kwun Tong Road

Back to Kwun Tong Road again, but this time we are a bit further to the north and west. The large building you can see on the left side of the road is the former Amoycan Industrial Centre. This building was constructed in 1961 and I guess was part of the Amoy canning factory (located behind it from this angle). In later years it became a mixture of enterprises including a self-storage business on the 3rd floor. This is signficant because just a few years ago (2016) a fire occurred in one of the storage units - one of the worst in many years - that ended up claiming the lives of two firemen. It may have been this that spurred the owner to redevelop the site. The building was demolished in 2019/2020 and a new high rise residential development called "The Aperture" has been built on the site. Same view today (I kid you not).

Desperate Mission - Germán Cobos (1965) - Kwun Tong Road, Kwun Tong

One of the roads we see during the vehicle chase is the Kwun Tong Road, although at the time of filming is was a fairly new road and development alongside it was still limited. The view of the road is very similar to this one filmed the following year for Asia-Pol Secret Service, although I think the images below were probably filmed slightly further east, but not much.

There's actually a few more images of different sections of Kwun Tong Road that I will share but will do so in a later post.

Asia-Pol Secret Service - Wang Yu (1966) - Kwun Tong Road, Kwun Tong

What had started off as a logical route from Chatham Road South to North and then through to Ma Tau Wai Road now goes all weird as Wang Yu is now driving west along Kwun Tong Road. The key landmarks for identifying this spot is the ridgeline of Black Hill in the background, as well as the Far East Factory Building, Johnson Industrial Mansion/Chuan Yuan Factory Building - all still around and located on the west side of the junction with Yan Yip Street.

The Johnson Industrial Mansion/Chuan Yuan Factory Building is worth noting because it helped me pinpoint a difficult location in an upcoming post.

Strangers - John Simm (2018) - Urban Oasis, Kowloon Bay

Porter is out for a run when she gets a call. The place where she takes the call is a new park near the Choi Hung Estate called Urban Oasis. Although Google maps classes this as Kowloon Bay, the location is actually part of what used to be a military base at the far north of the old Kai Tak airport site.