Police Force - Wang Chung (1973) - Butterfly Valley Interchange

After stealing the car in TST, the pair drive it up onto Lung Cheung Road via the Butterfly valley Interchange. The Mei Foo estate can be seen in the background of the top two images and also the blocks of the former Lai Chi Kok Hospital on the small hillock in the background of the middle one. This is now the Jao Tsung I Academy.

International Prostitution: Brigade criminelle - Jean-Louis Broust (1980) - Lai Chi Kok Amusement Park

I know I just posted a Sung Dynasty Village location, but this is a shot from outside the park in and around the bus terminus. The park went the way of the dodo many years ago and even in its later operational days much of its former site had already been redeveloped into housing. However, the area you see below was one of the last places to go and now sits under tower 3 of the "Nob Hill" residential development (yes,it really is called that).

International Prostitution: Brigade criminelle - Jean-Louis Broust (1980) - Sung Dynasty Village, Lai Chi Kok

For reasons that are lost on me, Dega gets Tazzi (Laura Gemser) involved and together they go to visit what appears to be a training school for courtesans. This was filmed at the Sung Dynasty Village in the old Lai Chi Kok Amusement Park. The Wah Lai Estate now covers much of the area where the village was located.

We Owe It to Our Children - Cheung Wood-yau (1955) - Castle Peak Road, Lai Chi Kok

The final location for this film is a look along Castle Peak Road in Lai Chi Kok. The clue here is the HK Mary Sing Shun Factory Building that was located at #495. I'm quite familiar with this area so to see it so empty (compared to today) is quite astonishing and is a good reminder of how much HK has filled up (with people and buidings) since the war. The factory beyond beyond was the huge "HK Spinners Factory Building" that stretched from Tung Chau Street to Tai Nan Street (now Tai Nan West Street). The Sing Shun name lives on today because the same site is now occupied by the Sing Shun Factory Building.

Police Story 2 - Jackie Chan (1988) - Cheung Shun Street, Lai Chi Kok

This is the street where Ka Kui follows the bombers and then has to jump on top of a truck and a bus in order to gain access to the building where they are holding his girlfriend. If the area looks familiar it's because just down the road is the Police Station from Righting Wrongs.

The Elite Industrial Building that Ka Kui leaps into (through the Lee Kum Kee sign) as well as the Great Wall Factory Building from where he starts his assault, are still around.

Cheung Sha Wan Plaza under construction in the background

Asia-Pol Secret Service - Wang Yu (1966) - Carlton Hotel, Tai Po Road

After the young girl he has just saved leaves him on the ferry, Wang Yu makes his way to his hotel. It's the Carlton Hotel on the Piper's Hill section of Tai Po Road in North Kowloon. We've see the hotel on the blog a couple of times previously (I Spy and Game of Death) but never the front or interior, so this is a nice addition to have. It was quite the spot during its heyday with live shows and quality food as well as the usual hotel amenities. The hotel crops up again later (bottom 3 images) when Wang Yu's colleague from Japan is sent over to make contact with him and appears on the restaurant terrace. The reason I know it's the hotel is because of the familiar wrought iron railings that can also be seen on the other two productions I linked to above. As mentioned in other posts, the hotel was replaced by Villa Carlton.

Painted Faces - Sammo Hung (1988) - Lai Chi Kok Amusement Park, Kowloon

The "Seven Little Fortunes" perform regularly on stage at the Lai Chi Kok Amusement Park (荔園).
Luckily it was still around when the filming took place (although it eventually closed in 1997 and the land has since been filled by a large housing development). I can't vouch for the interior stage shots or the later wax museum scenes as Master Yu and Master Cheng (Cheng Pei-pei) have a rather awkward heart to heart, but the main entrance and funfair appear to feature the real thing. The sign in the first image below was the neon sign over the entrance, but in this shot it's filmed from the interior area of the park, so the writing is the wrong way around.

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - Lai Chi Kok Prison, Lai Chi Kok

My stalwart followers will perhaps remember that I have posted once before about the old prison at Lai Chi Kok. The exterior was used in one of the scenes in the 1965 French film Les Tribulations d'un Chinois en Chine and involved a gunfight from several trucks carrying Coca-Cola bottles. It took some tracking down because the old prison was replaced (at some unknown date) by the newer, euphemistically named, Lai Chi Kok Reception Centre. It sounds very inviting doesn't it?

Anyway, in The Woman in Gray (Ep: 23) it is the location of a jailed female Japanese prisoner who was wrongly accused and convicted of murder and the episode is another one of those 99% studio based ones where Glenn Evans must investigate and find a key witness to the crime - the so-called "Woman in Gray". This is the only location from the episode.

The opening shot of the episode, as well as a later establishing shot shows the old prison so I finally get to see what the rest of it looked like. Note the buildings in the background of the first image. This is the old Lai Chi Kok hospital that has since been turned into the Jao Tsung-I Academy, a sort of cultural experience centre founded by (or dedicated to) local Chinese Cultural Historian Mr Yiu Chung-yee (aka Jao Tsung-I).

Narazumono - Ken Takakura (1964) - Lai Chi Kok Road, Mongkok

The next part of the opening credits takes us all the way up to the north end of Nathan Road where it joins with Lai Chi Kok Road just past Bute Street. This top image is the view looking from Lai Chi Kok Road back towards Nathan Road.

The rather elegant looking building in the background was the original Pioneer Building and it was the head office of the Kowloon Motorbus Company. To the right you can just make out an advert attached to the front of the Royal Theatre. That whole block (both buildings) has since been redeveloped into the blue and red glassed Pioneer Centre. The second image is the area just to the left of the upper one i.e. still on Lai Chi Kok Road, and is basically where the Mongkok Metropark Hotel now stands.

Another shift to the left in the camera work (below) and we are now looking at the junction with Prince Edward Road West. The top image shows (on the right) the remainder of the block that was replaced by the Mongkok Metropark Hotel with Prince Edward Road behind it. The lower image shows the view just beyond that looking at the building on the opposite corner.which shows the precursor to the current building. The current building (Tai Wah House) was constructed in 1967, so that building we see on screen only had a couple of years of life left.

Les Tribulations d'un Chinois en Chine - Jean-Paul Belmondo (1965) - Lai Chi Kok Prison, Butterfly valley

Well, after much to'ing and fro'ing behind the scenes I can confirm that the exterior prison location from Les Tribulations d'un Chinois en Chine has been successfully identified as the old version of Lai Chi Kok prison at the bottom of Butterfly Valley Road in Lai Chi Kok. I have Thomas to thank once again for his tenacious approach to these matters. Here is a reminder.

There are a few clues that have been picked up once Thomas had identified Lai Chi Kok as the area with the most potential so I'll go through a few of them. First off is the hilly terrain and the shaved slopes in the background. The shaved slopes are actually the area cut out to accommodate Cheung Hang Road which winds its way up the slope. The road the trucks are coming down is Butterfly Valley Road but it is hard to recognise it now due to all the roads that have been constructed here. The major one is perhaps the Tsing Sha Highway who's flyover now covers this whole area even up into the valley beyond.

The village that can be seen on the far side of the road in the second picture is Wai Man Village. It sat on the other side of a waterway which is why you can see a crowd piled up against a railing in that same picture - they couldn't get any closer without falling into the unseen water. Sadly, the village was removed soon after this film was made to make way for the construction of the Ching Cheung Highway (circa 1967) that now snakes around the side of that slope.

The white industrial building in the background of the lowest picture used to sit on the corner of Kom Tsun Street and the very end of Cheung Sha Wan Road but has since been replaced by another one called Grandion Plaza. The only anomaly I can find in all this is a missing building that should be this side of it called the Tong Yuen factory Building. According to building records (Centamap) it was built in 1963 but is obviously missing in the picture above so I can only surmise that perhaps that date reflects when construction commenced rather than when it was finished. Either that or the supposed filming dates for the film are wrong (I doubt it though - see bottom of page here). I am inclined to think the build date was wrong simply because I am not sure that industrial/factory buildings are issued with an occupational permit which normally forms the basis for the build date on residential buildings. I am willing to be proven wrong though so feel free to comment if you know what the deal is.

Anyway, you can look at the following Streetview to see how the area has changed. The picture below shows us looking up towards the hills in Butterfly Valley similar to the second and third pictures above. The prison was redeveloped into its current "correctional Institute" sometime in the late 70's/early 80's.

With regards to the interior of the prison, I am still awaiting confirmation but believe Arthur may have identified it correctly as the current Museum of Coastal Defense in Shau Kei Wan. I just need to make a trip there to size up the angles. Stay tuned (Edit: Arthur was correct, see here).

Spider-Man: The Dragon's Challenge - Nicholas Hammond (1979) - Mei Foo Sun Tsuen, Lai Chi Kok

Part of our helicopter tour takes us quickly back into the reaches of north west Kowloon and Lai Chi Kok - we catch a quick glimpse of a newly completed (well, at least the last phase was completed in 1978) Mei Foo Sun Tsuen. I've got a friend who lives here and these apartments are quite well spaced compared to the modern day stuff that you can hardly swing a mouse in, let alone a cat.

Anyway, the large bit of sea in front has since been reclaimed as well (the estate was already on largely reclaimed land taken over from the oil company that used to be based here) and is now the rather nice Lai Chi Kok park. Well worth a visit if you have a spare hour or two. Oh, and then there is the subsequent several hundred meters further out to sea which have now all been turned into container processing land and also joined Stonecutter Island onto the Kowloon mainland.

Soldier, Soldier - Robson Green (1992) - Lai Chi Kok Amusement Park, Kowloon

Time to tackle the remaining episode of the HK-based Soldier, Soldier series. The last episode was called, fittingly, The Last Post and details the last few remaining days and weeks for the battalion in HK. Whilst the boys are off playing wargames with the Royal Marines, the wives head off to the Sung Dynasty Village that used to be part of the Lai Chi Kok Amusement Park.

Interestingly, this is almost the exact same view captured by Andrew Suddaby in his 1980's era pictures of HK that can be found over on Gwulo.com. Having missed out on visiting this place when I had the chance (it was demolished in the late 90's to make way for several residential developments) I couldn't identify where it was until Andrew uploaded his pictures, so many thanks Andrew! Here is the direct link: http://gwulo.com/atom/22789.