Love Circles - Michelle Siu (1985) - The Peninsula Hotel, Tsim Sha Tsui

The last post from this film sees us outside the Peninsula Hotel as Blake, the crooked journo fresh from his blackmail shenanigans, catches the hotel shuttle bus back to Kai Tak airport. And so the Hong Kong chapter of this story ends as he hooks up with someone he meets on the bus.

As the bus turns left onto Salisbury Road we get to see the Planetarium and the former Intercontinental Hotel, now renamed back to the Regent Hotel.

Love Circles - Michelle Siu (1985) - East Tsim Sha Tsui Waterfront, Tsim Sha Tsui

After working out a plan to trick the journalist, a meeting place is arranged on the Kowloon side of the waterfront. You can see by the background buildings in image two that this section is the part in front of East TST.

Love Circles - Michelle Siu (1985) - Central Waterfront Walkway, Central

The journalist follows Ko-ko to the old waterfront walkway that used to run along the water-side facade of the G.P.O building. In the first image you can see the former Blake Pier in the background and the covered restaurant at the end of the pier (seen in a couple of films over the years here and here).

I'm not sure when the walkway was taken down but I think it was around the same time the Star Ferry Pier building was demolished in 2006 (you can see the Star ferry in the background of the last image). Anyway, the space is now occupied by a paved area in front of the GPO.

I forgot that I was here not so long ago and took a photo. Basically the space right in front of my camera is where the walkway extended to and where the lower two screen captures would have been filmed.

Love Circles - Michelle Siu (1985) - Pedder Street, Central

After being followed down from Hollywood Road, Koko crosses the road at Pedder Street between Wheelock House (where Citibank still is) and The Landmark Building.
 

Love Circles - Michelle Siu (1985) - Hollywood Road, Central

Ko-ko goes for a shop and walks past the Tai Wo and Company antiques shop at 64 Hollywood Road. It's still there as far as I know unless it has fallen victim to the pandemic measures in Hong Kong.

Love Circles - Michelle Siu (1985) - Barker Road Tram Station, The Peak

Ooh, I forgot about this location. It's where Yo-yo and Ko-ko (both played by Michelle Siu) talk about how the latter was being blackmailed. This scene was filmed on the roof top of the Barker Road Tram Stop at a time when access to the flat roof was a bit easier. It seems an odd place to film given the rather simple-but-splendid design of the station interior, however, I would assume the crew needed somewhere with a bit more space and less foot/tram traffic.

Love Circles - Michelle Siu (1985) - Peak Tramway, Central

We get to see a large part of the Peak Tramway as Ko-ko recounts (in flashback) the tale of how the journalist started following her. We see her enter the station at the Peak and ride the tram down to the lower tram terminus before she gets off and walks away. The first image shows the upper terminus with Mount Austin Road going uphill in the background.

Then we get some tram car interiors as she tells how some creepy dude was taking her pictures on the way down.

 Finally, Kok-ko gets off at the lower terminus and heads across the road.

Love Circles - Michelle Siu (1985) - Rose Gardens, Magazine Gap Road

Actually, we have seen this place before in another Harry Alan Towers production, Five Golden Dragons, but in that film we only see it from a distance before the close up moves to a couple of other residential buildings.

In this film, it is supposed to be the location where Yo-yo's sister lives and we see her car driving up the sloped driveway to the podium car park level before she gets out of the car and looks up to wave to her sister. Actually, the close up of the same actress on the balcony (playing the sister) appears to have been filmed elsewhere given the different style of balcony, but I have yet to pinpoint that location.

Love Circles - Michelle Siu (1985) - Cotton Tree Drive, Central

After driving up a couple of roads in Happy Valley, the car mysteriously appears on Cotton Tree Drive on the way up to the mid-levels. Much has changed around here but the overhead footbridge remains the same.

Love Circles - Michelle Siu (1985) - Blue Pool Road, Happy Valley

Despite just driving up Shan Kwong Road, the next shot shows the car driving up Blue Pool Road instead.

Love Circles - Michelle Siu (1985) - Shan Kwong Road, Happy Valley

Apparently, whilst still showing us views of Salisbury Road, the car manages to turn up Shan Kwong Road in Happy Valley. Most of the buildings you can see here are still around including Paramount Mansion (on the right).

Love Circles - Michelle Siu (1985) - Murray Building, Central

So whilst Yo-yo changes her clothes in the back of the car on the way to her sister's place, she's managing to catch the attention of a local man (a Cliff Richard lookalike) who can apparently see what is happening on Salisbury Road in Kowloon from all the way over on Garden Road in Central. To be fair, judging by the size of his glasses, I'm not all that surprised. We know it's Garden Road because we can see the white-arched ground floor of the Murray Building in the background.

Love Circles - Michelle Siu (1985) - Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

One of the roads we see on the journey home is Salisbury Road. In the first image you can see the Empire Centre through the windscreen and, in the lower image, the metal lattice work of the pedestrian flyovers that join the waterfront to Salisbury Road Garden (we were nearby not so long ago, in fact this was filmed/released the same year).

Love Circles - Michelle Siu (1985) - Kai Tak Airport, Kowloon

Part two of Kai Tak as Yo-yo exits the terminal building and is picked up by her sister's driver. I'll be honest - despite arriving via Kai Tak several times I don't remember this part of the airport as I would immediately go to the taxi line. Anyway, the sequence ends with a nice shot of the airport from the entrance/exit road. This section of the road has now been turned into Olympic Avenue.

Love Circles - Michelle Siu (1985) - Kai Tak Approach, Kowloon

I've just been reading the autobiography of Harry Alan Towers, Mr Towers of London, largely because I was looking for some behind the scenes anecdotes regarding some of the films I have covered on this blog (Towers was a producer responsible for The Million Eyes of Sumuru, Five Golden Dragons, The Vengeance of Fu manchu, and Black Cobra Woman). Sadly there wasn't much specific information about these productions however, I did also glean a couple of additional HK-shot movies from the memoir. It appears that in the latter part of Towers' producing career, he veered into the erotic/soft porn genre (hence Black Cobra Woman) and produced several movies in that genre. For two of them he returned to Hong Kong to shoot scenes. The first one, made in 1976, is called La fine dell'innocenza (Eng Title: Annie/Blue Belle) and I am trying track down a copy as I speak - there's one on ebay but it's a bit above budget. The other was was a production for the Playboy Channel made in 1985 and is called Love Circles. Thankfully much cheaper with the downside that I have to explain to my wife that I have it for "research" purposes.

The film appears to be about a variety of couples getting together around the world, with each liaison involving someone from the previous one. The one common factor is a packet of French cigarettes that is incidentally passed between the couples when they meet/depart with the pack finally returning to its original owner at the end of the film - hence the "circle" in the title. It was basically an excuse to travel the world on Hugh Hefner's dime and in return he gets a film to show on his TV channel. 

The Hong Kong segment of the film involves a flight attendant, Yo-yo, who helps out her twin sister, Ko-ko (the same actress, Michelle Siu, plays both parts), when she is being blackmailed by a journalist. If she doesn't spend the night with him, he will reveal the drug-related business of her husband to all the tabloid papers. So they hatch a plan to swap places at the crucial moment.

Anyway, now that you have recovered from the fact that this movie contains a plot beyond a repairman coming around to fix a broken washing machine, we can look at the establishing sequence for the Hong Kong section. It's our trusty old approach run by a plane into Kai Tak and despite the dodginess of the film as a whole, it's one of the better approach sequences I've seen over the years (similar but still inferior to Gambit and Golgo 13: Assignment Kowloon)