A Lotus for Miss Quon - Lang Jeffries (1967) - Li Garden, On Lok Tsuen

The next film up is a 1967 production (a French and German co-production, I think) that appears to have been shot almost entirely in the New Territories. It's based on an thriller written by James Hadley Chase (who, incidentally, also wrote the original novel - A Coffin from HK - on which Ein Sarg aus Hong Kong was based). The story is set in Vietnam but I suppose given the time it was made into a film, filming in Vietnam was not a possibility and so Hong Kong's vast New Territories serves as a decent stand in.

The main protagonist, Mark Jason (played by Lang Jeffries), is a school teacher who rents a nearby villa and one day finds a stash of diamonds in his wall. Unknown to him, the local corrupt police chief is also after the diamonds and Jason gets deeper and deeper into strife as he tries to escape to HK with his newly found stash and Vietnamese girlfriend (Miss Quon).

I think finding most of the locations in this film is going to be quite a challenge, but we can start off with a couple of easy ones. The first one is the villa that Jason was renting and where he finds the hidden stash of diamonds.

This building has been seen before on this blog, albeit from a side elevation. It's Li Garden (李園) in On Lok Tsuen just south of Fanling and I did a post for it a while back for Golgo 13: Assignment Kowloon where it makes a very brief appearance. However, if you are a fan of old HK movies then it may be quite familiar to you from being a popular filming location for local films back in the 50s and 60s (example here). Sadly none of the old mansions in On Lok Tsuen seem to exist anymore and the area has been turned into an industrial estate.

I had originally found that the building sits on the site of today's Smile building, but after examining aerial photos from the mid-60s it has become obvious to me that it was actually on the plot now occupied by the Kader Industrial Centre at 17 Lok Yip Road.

Golgo 13: Assignment Kowloon - Sonny Chiba (1977) - Lee Garden, Fanling

Here's a quick post from Golgo 13: Assignment Kowloon that I had a bit of trouble trying to identify. The problem was that it was inserted directly before the Bethanie sequence giving the impression that it was in or nearby the Bethanie grounds. By pure coincidence I saw a snippet of an old Cantonese movie and saw the same place and it turns out that it was located in On Lok Village in Fanling. This is the same village that once had the Fanling Babies Home.

The village still exists - it's located quite close to  Fanling East Rail station - but the section containing all the large European-style villas was turned in to a factory estate. I'm not sure how many villas were demolished but just one or two would have been a sad sight to see. The villagers at the time agreed and about 200 of them staged a massive protest to try and prevent the demolition. Sadly it was in vain, although apparently the protest took a serious turn when tear gas was fired and around 20 or so people were arrested. Anyway, its beauty meant it was popular with film and TV companies as a filming location. The only thing I can't find is the exact location of this place and how it relates to the modern layout of the estate.