My Wife is a Gangster 3 - Shu Qi (2006) - Freder Centre, Ma Tau Kok

Aryoung catches up with the gang boss on the roof of the Freder Centre at the top end of Ma Tau Kok. We've seen it before, quite some time ago, as a Police Station on the Strangers miniseries. The wasteland in the background is the cleared out former Kai Tak Airport site. Suffice to say that wastleand is now full of malls, new residential developments and Hong Kong's brand new (as of April 2025) Kai Tak Sports Park.

Bullet for Hire - Simon Yam (1991) - Ma Tau Kok Road, Ma Tau Kok

Han and Shan's next job is to kill a rival gang member, but when Shan goes inside to do the deed, their inside man has been caught and tortured (with a chainsaw!). The location for this sequence was along the far eastern end of Ma Tau Kok Road outside the Newport Centre. Back left is the Ma Tau Kok gas naptha plant.

Inter-Pol - Tang Ching (1967) - Yuk Yat Street, Hung Hom

The bad guys place a time bomb on the retrieved submerged car so that any evidence of their shenanigans is destroyed. This shot shows the said car being towed up Yuk Yat Street just prior to exploding. The white building behind was part of the Wyler Textiles factory that was located on this block until it was replaced by Wyler Gardens in 1979. The taller buildings in the background are still around. They're the "Lucky Building" and "Kapok Industrial Building" on San Ma Tau Street. You can just see a gas holder to the left of the buildings - part of the still in use Ma Tau Kok Gas Works.

Crossing Hennessy - Jacky Cheung (2010) - Cattle Depot Artists Village, Ma Tau Kok

After meeting by chance outside the law courts, Loy invites Oi Lin to a photographic art exhibition at the Cattle Depot in Ma Tau Kok. I did actually pop down here a few years ago and it's well worth a visit even if there is nothing going on inside. The Govt has given it a bit of a clean up, but thankfully have gone against their usual form and left much of the original buildings intact. It's free to enter.

This place operated as an abattoir until around 1969 when slaughtering duties were transferred to a new site in Cheung Sha Wan and this site was kept as a quarantine depot for various livestock including cattle, pigs and sheep. It remained in use until 1999 and anyone who was in Hong Kong in the 1990s may remember the livestock trains that used to roll down the East Rail (then KCR) line. I can always remember my first experience standing on the platform at Tai Po and watching everyone take a step or two back from the edge. I had no idea what was going on until the train rolled by and I was hit in the face with the smell of the pigs in the back. Quite overpowering.

Yakuza on Foot - Tomisaburô Wakayama (1969) - To Kwa Wan Road, Kowloon

The scene where one of Oriental Travel's drug mules is attacked by the triads, and has his drug stash stolen, was filmed at the very top end of To Kwa Wan Road where it reached the perimeter fence around the Kai Tak airfield site. This location is now the start point of the relatively new Shing Kai Road that now traverses the old runway and airport site.

Yellow Emanuelle - Chai Lee (1977) - Old Blocks on Ma Tau Kok Road

I thought this view of a plane lifting off at Kai Tak was quite interesting because it shows some of the area just to the south of the airport site. I think this shot was most probably shot when this scene was being filmed because it is basically filmed from the same location.

In the initial image below you can just see the top corner of the old Ma Tau Kok Public Pier- which I have just recently confirmed has been completely removed due to the construction of the "Central Kowloon Route". The Kowloon City Ferry Pier is untouched but the route emerges from a tunnel right next to it and the old public pier was directly in the way.

Anyway, the old brown buildings that can be seen in the other images are nameless Chinese tenements that still exist along the very tip of Ma Tau Kok Road and are separated by Hing Yin Street, Chung Sun Street and Ming Lun Street.

The gas works in front was once part of the extended site that has since been redeveloped into a residential development called the "Grand Waterfront". The gasworks are still around but the site is now limited to the opposite side of To Kwa Wan Road (reminder).

Yellow Emanuelle - Chai Lee (1977) - Kowloon City Ferry Pier, Ma Tau Kok

Emy lives on one of the outlying islands and has to go home. She gets George to drop her off at the ferry pier. In this case Kowloon City Ferry Pier. It's an odd choice for travelling out to the outlying islands given that the last image below tells us the ferry is going to North Point.

In the background of the top image you can see the old Ma Tau Kok public pier with its rudimentary roof and supporting columns. I posted about the same place a few months ago. The whole area is currently undergoing some major redevelopment so I'm not sure how much will be left when it's all finished. (edit: can confirm the old Ma Tau Kok public pier has now completely gone)

The ferry, by the way, is the Man Fook (民福) which was in operation between 1969 - 1999.

Police Story 2 - Jackie Chan (1988) - Kai Tak Tunnel, Ma Tau Kok

Ka Kui tricks the baddies so that he can enter the tunnel and cut off the radio communication that would otherwise allow the bombers to set off his vest bomb. The tunnel in question is the Kai Tak Tunnel, still going strong after all these years even though the airport it once ducked under has long since gone. So, Ka Kui drives in through the west entrance (image 1), stops the car mid-tunnel to deal with the vest (image 2), and then runs out of the east entrance (image 3) before the bad guys can cotton on to what is unfolding.

Strangers - John Simm (2018) - Luk Ming Street, Ma Tau Kok

Just a very short walk from the Freder Centre (the original police station location), in fact directly opposite, is a small estate of 12 tenement blocks built between 1959 - 61. I'm not sure if the estate has a name but each block is separated from the next one by a small street. In this scene when Jonah is on the phone to his sister back in the UK, he is walking down one of these streets - Luk Ming Street. The low red roofed buildings behind him are the Cattle Depot Artists Village buildings.

The next part of the sequence shows him sitting at a cafe at the eastern end of the estate along Ma Tau Kok Road. Just behind Jonah's back is Hok Ling Street.

Strangers - John Simm (2018) - Kowloon City Road, Ma Tau Kok

Jonah waits for David to come out of the station so he can challenge him and find out who he is. This was filmed walking down Kowloon City Road to the junction with Ma Tau Kok Road to the south. The wall behind Anthony Wong in the last image marks the roof to the entrance to the Kai Tak tunnel (you can see a reverse angle on this old post).

Strangers - John Simm (2018) - Freder Centre, Ma Tau Kok

The police station that Jonah (John Simm) attends - in order to identify his wife's body - is actually an industrial building located immediately south of the old airport area. This is also the same place he first sees his wife's other husband, David Chen (Anthony Wong).

Les Anges Gardiens - Gerard Depardieu (1995) - Kai Tak Tunnel, Ma Tau Kok

Yet more of the car chase, now we are back in Kowloon and close to the actual location this was all supposed to be set at. This is the southern Ma Tau Kok entrance to the Kai Tak Tunnel. The opposite northern entrance of the tunnel (Kowloon Bay end) can be seen in Police Story 2.

China Rose - George C. Scott (1983) - Kowloon City Ferry Pier, Kowloon

Crossing the harbour by vehicular ferry was still a common route in the 80's (the only vehicular ferry service now is for dangerous good vehicles barred - for obvious reasons - from using the tunnels). MacGraw and Scott take the ferry from an, as yet, unidentified pier and head over to the Kowloon City Pier at San Ma Tau Street. The key to identifying this location is the gasworks in the background. The gas works are still there on To Kwa Wan Road.

Knock Off - Jean Claude Van Damme (1997) - On Lok Factory Building, Ma Tau Kok

In a very bizarre turn of events, Lin Heung restaurant toilets seem to have a time and space continuum portal inside because when JCVD goes to try and find Schneider, he miraculously appears at the top of a factory building on the other side of the harbour!

Back in '97 the building had a massive Coke advert painted in the side (I'm sure they paid for it to be on film), these days the building has a more sober beige paint job.

I find the view back the other way a bit more interesting though. You can see quite a bit behind Paul Sorvino's head including the Cattle Depot - a former abattoir turned into artists village - it's the low rise brown buildings to the left of Sorvino's shoulder. You can also see the old airport at the back.

A quick look over JCVD's shoulder reveals and interesting old block occupying the corner of Ma Hang Chung Road and Kowloon City Road, but this place is now an empty site awaiting redevelopment as you can see from the Streetview picture below.