Chinese Box - Jeremy Irons (1997) - The China Club, Bank of China Building

Someone once told me that the New Years Eve party scenes at the beginning of Chinese Box were filmed at The China Club - Sir David Tang's members-only restaurant/bar club located in the top three floors of the old Bank of China building in Central. I've never been to the club myself but it looks as though this particular nugget of information is true. I was able to compare the staircase John (Jeremy Irons) walks up during the beginning of the scene with some footage from inside the club and noted the matching ornate wrought iron railings.

Love in Hong Kong - Pauline Teutscher (1983) - Chater Road and surrounds

Here's a few shots of one of the actors walking to his car, parked in front of the Hong Kong Club, but he takes a rather roundabout way of getting there. He starts off near the Supreme Court building with the Bank of China Building in the background.

Next up we see him, as expected, walking through the entrance to Chater Garden.

But then, after Chater Garden, we see him now to the north of the Supreme Court Building and picking up his car in front of the old Hong Kong Club - which was knocked down soon after this film was made.

Speaking of the old Hong Kong Club, note the archways of the club's front portico in the background. As far as I am aware, these arches are the only surviving bits of the old building, and they are now located inside, on the first floor above the main entrance of the current club building. Here's a snap I took a few weeks ago (no, I'm not a member, they would never accept riff raff like me as one).

Something Good - Luca Barbareschi (2013) - Des Voeux Road Central, Hong Kong

After finding out that his Indian competitors are undercutting his dodgy milk product, Matteo assumes that they are the ones responsible for the murder of his business partner and goes to confront the Indian company boss on the streets of Central. The altercation occurs outside the Supreme Court Building.

Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong - Jamie Chung (2015) - Queensway, Central

The next location is a much larger area compared to the narrow streets that have taken up much of the last few posts. This is the stretch of Queensway in front of the Cheung Kong Centre and Bank of China Tower just before it turns into Queen's Road Central. The scene starts off with the camera positioned on the Garden Road flyover looking down as the two cross the road.

We then get some nice views looking up at the various tall buildings here including the much smaller (but more stylish) Bank of China Building (the older BoC), HSBC HQ, Cheung Kong Centre and the Bank of China Tower.

There is a brief shot of the pair as they enter Chater Garden...

...and then inexplicably (though keeping with the illogical way the walk has gone up to now) they end up all the way back over to the Garden Road flyover where the camera was located for the opening shot. The spiral staircase is the same one that you can walk down from Garden Road back onto Queensway by the entrance to Chater Garden.

Les Tribulations d'un Chinois en Chine - Jean-Paul Belmondo (1965) - Hong Kong Cricket Club, Central

The large open concrete Chater Garden (if you can call something covered in concrete a "garden") was once the grassy pitch for the Hong Kong Cricket Club. For over a hundred years it operated as a sports ground (from 1851 until 1975) and I guess the French film makers caught it on film in the last few years of its existence before the Cricket Club moved to its current location up at Wong Nai Chung Gap. Call me old fashioned but I prefer the site of green grass to drab grey concrete any day of the week. Sadly it's the latter that prevails in HK these days.

The first photo shows the camera pointing almost directly west and we can see The Hongkong Hilton Hotel, the Peak, Bank of China/HSBC/Standard Chartered as well as the former LegCo building (originally the Law Courts and now returned to the legal world as the Court of Final Appeal). Interestingly, the building behind the Courts is what looks to be the 2nd generation Prince's Building under the final stages of construction. There looks to be scaffolding and catch nets installed around the exterior.

The next picture is looking NW and you can see a corner of the Mandarin Oriental at the extreme left as well as the cricket club's clubhouse below it (was it the club house or just a viewing pavilion?). You can also see the former Hong Kong Club building and City Hall poking up just behind it. The building with the metal spikes on the top (behind the scaffolding) is the former Cable and Wireless Building. The building in scaffolding looks to me to be the old Hong Kong Club annex that was actually in  the process of being demolished (Gwulo puts the demolition year as 1966, so that ties in nicely).

The next picture below shows a closer view of the buildings already mentioned but the final one below is a view looking NE and shows what I believe to be the Naval dockyard power station chimney.

Last, but not least is this brief shot over to the old Murray Barracks building. The new(er) Bank of China building now occupies that location and while the HK Govt likes to trumpet a heritage preservation success concerning how the old barrack building was carefully taken apart and then reassembled brick-by-brick in Stanley, the reality is something slightly less romantic.What really happened was that no one knew how to put the thing back together so they simply poured a huge concrete rectangle to serve as the centre of the building and then reattached the balconies like hanging baubles on a Christmas tree. HK-style heritage preservation indeed.

Les Tribulations d'un Chinois en Chine - Jean-Paul Belmondo (1965) - Queen's Road Central, Hong Kong

This film has some great shots around Central in the mid-1960's. Here is one taken from battery Path (I think) overlooking Queen's Road Central towards both the Bank of China and the HSBC building.

It's not often we get a view of this side of the old HSBC building (demolished and replaced by the current building in 1984) and when it first cropped up on this blog (back when I was doing That Man Bolt) I wasn't sure if it was actually in Hong Kong. I know better now, of course, Look at the lower right of the bottom picture and it looks like that might be the stone wall on the steps up to Battery Path.

The Million Eyes of Sumuru - George Nader (1967) - Hong Kong Hilton, Central

Like the other Harry Alan Towers'-produced Five Golden Dragons, Sumuru also uses the Hilton quite extensively through the film and it looks as though they used to same high level suite for the filming in both movies. Both inside and outside of the hotel can be seen on film. We'll start with these pictures taken outside the entrance and showing the Hilton's very own rickshaws.

Actually, I wasn't convinced of the provenance of these rickshaws and wondered if they had been created just for the film,but a very helpful chap called Chan Tse-leung was able to confirm that they were indeed the real deal. Of course since then I have also noticed they make an appearance in one of the screen grabs I have for Five Golden Dragons (see second picture on the link).

In tye following pictures we can also see the oppiste side of Queen's Road. The top picture shows the lower portion of the old Bank of China and in the second picture you can see the rear entrance of the old HSBC building as well as the old Govt offices west wing in the distance.

A couple more Hilton-related shots include the same bamboo furniture in the hotel suite (check out the link I already posted for the rickshaw shots and scroll down).

And in case you hadn't spotted it in the last post about Queen's Pier, the boat that Frankie Avalon boards with his female contact was the Hong Kong Hilton's very own Wan Fu. We haven't seen the Wan Fu since we looked at another Hilton-centric film, Kill a Dragon, a couple of years ago.

That Man Bolt - Fred Williamson (1973) - HSBC Building, Queen's Road Central

The bank for which Bolt has to do his couriering is an anonymous place by all accounts and staffed by none other than Geoffrey Weeks who also played the Braithewaite character in Enter the Dragon.
On an aside, Chaplin Chang told me Geoffrey Weeks was a radio host with RTHK (Radio Television Hong Kong). I went and asked Annemarie Evans (an RTHK presenter) about this and she confirmed he was.

Never having seen (up until this post, at least) this side of the old HSBC building before, I wasn't even sure this was filmed in Hong Kong at all. I just didn't recognise the place. It has since popped up in a few more films but for a while I was confused. This building - the 3rd version at this address - was built in the 1930's and lasted up until 1984 when it was replaced by the current Norman Foster-designed HQ.

This is the entrance that fronts Queen's Road and its not often seen. Thankfully, the photographer Harrison Forman did get a decent picture of this side in the 1940s giving me the conformation I required. I can't seem to embed the picture here so please follow this link:

http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/ref/collection/agsphoto/id/18301

Anyway, here's how it looks on film.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Edinburgh Place, Central

More specifically the carpark that has sat here for many years. Interestingly, once referred to as the Star Ferry Multi-storey Car Park on local maps but since the sad demolition of that famous ferry pier, it's now just the Edinburgh Place car park.

This scene involves a bit of action as the cops follow the Middleman down from the Peak and a gunfight ensues when some local gangsters turn up and he escapes in a cloud of burnin' rubber.

Bottom of the carpark ramp with the HK Club in the background

Men of the Dragon - Jared Martin (1974) - Des Voeux Road, Central

Another blurry shot from Men of the Dragon as we see the car (in fact a Mercedes Taxi, which I am assured was a common sight in HK during the 70's) containing Katie Saylor drives past the Hilton Hotel and down towards the old Bank of China.

Of course the Hilton went in 1994 and was replaced by Cheung Kong Centre, but the old Bank of China building is still around thankfully and remains unchanged. The angle on Streetview isn't really a match so I have included an angle which shows the lattice stonework that we can see in the last screen grab above, and you can see the glass frontage of the Cheung Kong building where the Hilton Hotel used to stand.

This sequence was actually immediately following the previous post I did featuring the old Cricket Club pitch, which would have been off screen left in the above series of pictures.