...and Millions will die! - Richard Basehart (1973) - Old Aberdeen Police Station

Finally, after all these years of this old, colonial, brick Police Station appearing in countless movies as mere background, I have finally found a film that used it as a proper location. This is where Pruit goes to consult the Chief Inspector of police about what to do about the imminent gas threat. It's a shame we only get a brief glimpse of the place from one of its verandahs. The building is still around and used as a youth club called "The Warehouse".

Casse-tête chinois pour le Judoka - Marc Briand (1967) - Ap Lei Chau, Aberdeen Harbour

Ap Lei Chau is the small island on the opposite side of the harbour to Aberdeen. Now a combination of Govt housing estates and luxury residential developments it still has some boat yards centred on the eastern waterfront. However, as you can see from the following confrontation, the boat building industry on the island was once significantly larger.

Shirley's World (TV Series) - Shirley MacLaine (1972) - Aberdeen Harbour, Aberdeen

Next up is a series that originally ran in 1972. It consisted of 17 episodes shot largely in London and the UK but with several episodes shot overseas - including three filmed on location in Hong Kong.

So first up is some of the locations from Follow That Rickshaw including this opening scene of Aberdeen Harbour. This footage is also re-used in Evidence in Camera (so I won't repeat a post for that episode).

As you can see there is a nice closeup on the old Aberdeen Police Station on the hill and the old Shek Pai Wan estate behind. Autostitch has done a fairly nice job on the panorama below.

The Yin and Yang of Mr Go - James Mason (1970) - Aberdeen Harbour, Aberdeen

Unfortunately for our next film the print I have looks to have been taken directly from an old VHS copy because the quality is quite poor even after de-interlacing almost every screen grab. I heard of this film through Chaplin Chang who also happens to have a small role in the film (he is a master of this) as well as being credited as Assistant Director.

Anyway, I also heard about some of the shenanigans that went on during production and it seems that Burgess Meredith wasn't a particularly organised director and, in fact, didn't complete the film in the end. According to Chaplin, two key scenes were never shot and the way the film jumps around seems to confirm it. It sounds as though the version available to buy was a cobbled together work print and it really shows. Despite the presence of James Mason and Jeff Bridges - and even a cameo role from King Hu (as a Japanese Bank manager) - the film is just tragically awful.

Of the scenes that were actually completed, one of the first was some shots of Aberdeen Harbour where Mr Y.Y Go (played by James Mason in *sigh* "yellowface") has a boat where he plots his evil schemes.

You can barely make it out in the second picture but the old Aberdeen Police Station is just visible on the hillside at the back.

The World of Suzie Wong - William Holden (1960) - Hung Shing Temple, Ap Lei Chau

You can tell I am currently on a blitz of forgotten locations, right? Here is one from The World of Suzie Wong that I only really discovered a short while ago. Basically, the reason for these old posts is that I have been revisiting stuff with my current level of knowledge of these places and it's revealing how much I used to miss when I first started out with this blog.

Anyway, just before the couple head to the Tai Pak for their lunch, they head to Aberdeen and Lomax is seen painting/drawing. Look carefully at the following screen caps and you'll see that the actors are on the Ap Lei Chau side of the harbour.

The top picture shows the view looking to the west from Ap Lei Chau. The temple on the left is the very historical Hung Shing Temple on the Ap Lei Chau waterfront. It's thought to be the oldest temple in the area and is now a protected monument. Looking at modern pictures I would say the roof has undergone a renovation recently but it is definitely the same place despite the tidying up of the harbourfront.

The lower picture, from the same sequence, shows Holden sketching Suzie and we can see that this is also on the Ap Lei Chau side because you can just make out the old Aberdeen Police Station in the extreme top right of the picture on the other side of the harbour.

Lord Jim - Peter O'Toole (1965) - Aberdeen Harbour, Aberdeen

Although filmed in HK during 1963, this film wasn't released until 1965. Based on the book by Joseph Conrad, it revolves around a disgraced sailor who tries to make amends on past decisions by helping a local tribe (perhaps supposed to be Malayan?...I haven't read the book so can't say for sure) fight a despotic General.

Aberdeen was actually one of the main stars of the film it seems because the same location is used several times to portray different places. At the beginning of the film it is supposed to be some anonymous port on the Indonesian island of Java, and then later, with a bit of jiggery pokery (some footage of a train superimposed in the background) it gets turned into the fictional post of Batu Kring from where Jim starts his epic up river mission.

In the top picture you can see the promontory that houses the seminary (look closely and you can just make out its roof) with Brick Hill in the background. The second picture shows both the Tai Pak and Sea palace moored in the middle of the harbour.

Later in the film we get the shot below - essentially taken from the same point as the second picture above, but without the zoom, but notice that there is a trail of smoke at the back. This is actually the superimposed train. From the looks of it everything front and middle is real but the far distant shoreline has been manipulated. It's quite convincing for a film shot so long ago, but the big giveaways of course are not only the still obvious floating restaurants in the middle of the harbour, but also the obvious presence of the old Police Station on the hill on the right. This is a great shot of the building because 1963 was obviously a time before any high rises had been built along that part of Aberdeen Praya Road. I'll do a separate post later where the film used those low rises with a closer angle.

Spider-Man: The Dragon's Challenge - Nicholas Hammond (1979) - Jumbo Floating Restaurant, Aberdeen

A significant proportion of filming took place on the famous Jumbo floating restaurant in Aberdeen Harbour. It seems to be the villain's favourite place to do business giving us some nice glimpses around Aberdeen as a whole.

I'll do a smaller Aberdeen post next, but I thought it was worth dedicating a single post to the Jumbo because I've never seen it used so much in a film before. Plus there is a neat stunt at the end when Spidey gets hit by a tranquiliser dart and takes a dive off the top of the restaurant into those rather disgusting Aberdeen Harbour waters.

It's also interesting to note that when this filming took place, the restaurant was actually positioned right next to the waterfront. Was it undergoing some sort of repair? Given that this (and the Tai Pak) usually sits on some rather hefty wooden piles (no, sorry kids, this restaurant doesn't normally 'float' at all) I doubt the position was at the request of the TV movie production company.

Some shots of the interior

Restaurant positioned along the Aberdeen Waterfront...but why?

And finally some shots around the roof - which went on to become a restaurant called Top Deck by Cafe Deco. It closed a few years ago but I don't know if anything replaced it. I almost made it there once but just before we arrived it started chucking it down with rain, so we cancelled. Not long after that it closed down...oh well. The following is a great shot taken from the roof showing, quite clearly, the old Police Station on the hillside at the back. Pretty much every film shot in Aberdeen has this building somewhere in the background.

And then Spidey gets shot and a rather brave stuntman takes the fall into the water.

Splash!

Jaguar Lives - Joe Lewis (1978) - Aberdeen Harbour, Aberdeen

Aberdeen featuring extensively in the following scene as Lewis follows a local hood back to his hiding place and discovers how they are transporting drugs (hidden in buckets of fish). We get a thorough tour of the whole area starting with the waterfront right in front of the town, but there are some interesting sights.

Starting at the top of Brick Hill - I believe the film was made in the year that Ocean Park opened but I don't know if the cable car was a feature of the park at the time - we zoom down into the harbour area. In the second picture you can see the uprights of what was to become the Ap Lei Chau road bridge. This started construction in January 1977. The space at the back on Brick Hill is now occupied by the Canadian International School that was hitting the headlines last year with its various troubles. The bottom picture in this series shows the wide angle view with the former Police Station up on the hillside. We've seen this building in many a movie on this blog.

We catch a closer look at the former Police Station in the following screencap as the action moves down onto the water.

But following that we also see some other buildings that are still very much around. The buildings you see below are the ones that now front Wu Nam St. Of course in 1978 they were along the waterfront but that has since been reclaimed and become the main bus terminal as well as having the widened Aberdeen Praya Road running across the front (it's actually a highway for through traffic now).

You can see the same block on this Streetview grab, although from the side because trees along the road prevent me from getting a similar view. It's also useful to see how much has been reclaimed in front. So, to put some context there, the camera would probably have been somewhere around where the left hand carriageway of the highway now stands (bottom left of the picture).

Our next shot shows us looking over towards the Tai Pak. I'm not sure on the position of the Tai Pak in 1978 but I do know that the Jumbo had also been opened a couple of years before. Tai Pak is now part of Jumbo Kingdom and sits right next to the Jumbo over at the Shum Wan end of the harbour, but it's possible it was still at the Aberdeen end when this was filmed.

Speaking of the Jumbo, as we just were, it makes a surprise appearance but not at this part of the film. The following screencap is actually taken during a sequence when the action moves over to Macau and the film makers either intentionally or unwittingly stuck in the Jumbo footage as part of the montage. It's quite possible they mistook it for the Macau floating casino, which we will see in a later post.

Codename: Wildgeese - Lewis Collins (1984) - Aberdeen Harbour, Aberdeen

Collins goes to meet his paymasters on a boat moored in Aberdeen Harbour. Like The Protector filmed the following year, this was during a time when the Jumbo Kingdom consisted of all three of the famous 'floating' restaurants: Jumbo, Tai Pak and Sea Palace.

Pay attention to the top picture and you might just be able to see the Old Police Station on the hillside poking out from behind the high rises.

I Spy (TV Series) - Robert Culp (1965) - Aberdeen Harbour

An interesting view of Aberdeen looking easterly from the western end of Ap Lei Chau. This view is quite unique because not long after this was filmed, HongKong Electric (now one of Li Ka-shing's cash cows) built a huge great power station around here (you can see it in the background of the lower shot from this Enter the Dragon post).

A few things can be seen here including the Aberdeen Seminary (on the small hillock ion the background), the floating restaurants (including the Tai Pak, furthest away), and the old Aberdeen Police Station (on the left hillside).

With regards to the floating restaurants, this was their original location when the small ferry shuttle was located on the waterfront in front of the old town. The old pier location was reclaimed many years ago (and is now a bus terminus), the restaurants were moved further to the east - next to the hillock with the seminary - and the ferry piers are now on the other side of that same hillock just off Shum Wan Road.

The following shot - well I can't place it exactly but it looks as though they were probably taken along the Hong Kong Island side of the harbour (as opposed to Ap Lei Chau side).

This shot below shows the very distinctive Chinese cemetery on the hillside, so looking sort of NE from the middle of the harbour and our last shot should be familiar to anyone who has watched any film featuring Aberdeen harbour over the past 60 years or so - the sampan ride.