The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires - Peter Cushing (1974) - Pak Shek Au, North District

I must admit to being stumped by this location for quite some time (years probably) and in my talks with various other people, such as Andi (who is much better at this than me), we came to the conclusion that the following area - one used by Shaw Bros on multiple occasions I hasten to add - must be somewhere up in the hills around Sai Kung and Movietown.

However, search as much as I could, I could just never find anything to match the ridge lines in the background.

It wasn't until just the other day that a particular ridge line struck a deeply buried memory in my brain and I eventually managed to finally place the filming location in Pak Shek Au - a small hilly area located between the Lok Ma Chau border area and Castle Peak Road, just down the road from Ho Sheung Heung.

Ho Sheung Heung and its neighbouring hill, Tai Shek Mo, you may remember as being the location of the filming of the fight scene between Sammo Hung and Bruce Lee at the beginning of Enter the Dragon, and it turns out that Tai Shek Mo was also instrumental in me being able to identify this location to. That's it at the back right, seen from the west, in the first picture below.

Now, these days this whole area has greened a lot but has also suffered from the sort of unchecked illegal development that blights much of the New Territories - basically a mish-mash of concreted parking areas, container storage, light industrial workshops, plant hire and other various blots on the landscape. This is a big shame when you see how empty and open it was back in the 1970's.

Now, we already know from some of the great spotting Andi has done that nearby Ho Sheung Heung has been featured in multiple films, including many Shaws productions, and seeing that this place is very close then it's easy to imagine it being a popular spot for filming here. I need to check but I believe there are many Shaws films that feature these same hills and dirt tracks (I'm pretty sure Come Drink With Me is one of these considering the last but one picture Andi has put in this post that shows Tai Shek Mo and its military insignia).

Anyway, mystery solved. Here are some more grabs. The first one shows a hill in the background that I've actually been to the top of without realising it's the same place, it's Ki Lun Shan. Somewhere hidden between there and the actors is the 1970's version of the Castle Peak Road (a much smaller version of the current one, but still a main thoroughfare at the time).

Ki Lun Shan in the background

Finally to finish, a shot taken as the actors walk closer along a dirt road towards Tai Shek Mo. The are you see is now filled with the aforementioned ad hoc industrial workshops previously mentioned. Incidentally, the HK Govt currently has plans to turn this whole area - or at least the nearby part called Kwu Tung - into a New Town. There's lots of opposition but it could be the industrial blight will be replaced by something even worse...

Soldier, Soldier - Robson Green (1992) - Lok Ma Chau Loop, Lok Ma Chau

Okay I'm being a bit cheeky here because it's not the location we see on screen but rather the area that can be seen on the board at the back of the room. Here's the grab.

The board at the back lists the area as somewhere called "Stony Spur". I have no idea if the local British Army parlance described the area as such - and I hope someone who actually served on border duty will be able to enlighten us all - but it seems to me that the big bit sticking down is in fact the area that is known as the Lok Ma Chau Loop.

The area has been the source of some controversy of late because even though it is still officially on the other side of the border, the HK Govt (no doubt salivating about all the bribes they will get for awarding contracts to various developers) agreed to take over he management of the place because it sits on our side of the Shenzhen river. It's...complicated.

I Spy (TV Series) - Robert Culp (1965) - Lok Ma Chau Lookout

A quick scene that AP tells me involves Culp supposedly walking to Aberdeen (coming up in the next post) but was in fact filmed almost as far away as you could possibly get from Aberdeen - right next to the border (sorry, I should use the more politically correct description of 'boundary') with Mainland China at Lok Ma Chau.

Only until relatively recently, Lok Ma Chau was a popular stop on the local and overseas tourist itinerary because the 'lookout' provided and uncluttered view across the border to the strange and mystifying land that lay beyond. These days it is one of the last bastions of HK wilderness. You can still go to the lookout but instead of seeing tranquil rice paddies being tended to by hardy farmers and their water buffalo, all you can see is the stark contrast between HK's undeveloped 'Closed Border Area' and the massive development that has sprung up in Shenzhen across the way. The actual border point now is - along with Lo Wu - a very busy place indeed with road and rail transport across into the Mainland. The east rail extension to Lok Ma Chau opened quite soon after I arrived in HK.

Anyway, here are some views across the (still to be found) wetlands,  followed by a nice panorama of the two shots combined.

And in case you are wondering where the actual 'lookout' is,the pavilion in the grab below shows you where all those tourists stood to take their cross-border holiday snaps. It's been upgraded now with a surrounding platform and one of those metal relief views showing what you are looking at, but I think it's still the same structure today.