We're Going to Eat You - Norman Chui (1980) - Shing Mun Reservoir

I'm currently working on a bit of a Tsui Hark side project for a friend and as a result was watching Hark's second directorial feature, We're Going to Eat You, as part of my research. I honestly can't watch Hong Kong films these days without making the locations my main focus, so I usually have to watch them twice, once for the locations and then again for everything else.

The story concerns a village where the inhabitants are cannibals and trap unwary travellers, murdering them and then chopping them up for distribution amongst the villagers. It's a bit gruesome in parts but is most definitely a satricial comedy (a criticism of China's "Great leap Forward"). Melvin Wong stars as the reformed bandit, Rolex, who is sought after by Norman Chui's "Agent 999". Eddie Ko plays a rather evil village boss.

The film opens with a shot of the submerged trees at Shing Mun Reservoir and it's supposed to be the coastline of the plaace where the cannibalistic village is. However, I'm not sure how much subsequent filming was done here. Most of the forested scenes in this film make it impossible to know where they were.

A Touch of Zen - Hsu Feng (1971) - Shing Mun Reservoir, Tsuen Wan

While we're on the subject of King Hu films supposedly shot only in Taiwan, I thought it is worth including some shots of the last 30 minutes or so of A Touch of Zen. The Chinese title 俠女  (Haap Lui in Cantonese) means "chivalrous woman" and refers to the main character, Yang Hui-ching (Hsu Feng), who has escaped the clutches of a corrupt eunuch who has had her family killed. Most of the film was indeed shot in Taiwan, but the last half hour of extended finale - as the righteous fugitives battle the eunuch's military commander (Han Ying-chieh) and his two sons (one of them played by Sammo Hung) - was shot at two locations in Hong Kong.

This first location is when Mr Gu, along with his newly-acquired baby son, falls asleep among some trees next to what looks like a river. The river is in fact Shing Mun Reservoir and the trees are a cluster of paperbark trees which are quite famous at this location and have featured in numerous films over the years. In fact, King Hu returned here the next year to shoot scenes for The Valiant Ones.

This area is located at the northwest side of the reservoir and is fairly easy to get to. It has changed a bit (and the reservoir is never quite this full these days) but the paperbark trees are still there.

The film's star, Hsu Feng, retired from the film world a while back and now runs a large property development company in Hong Kong set up by her late husband (Tomson Group).

The Valiant Ones - Roy Chiao (1975) - Shing Mun Reservoir, Tsuen Wan

I'm a big fan of King Hu films no matter on where they were made. Some were made solely in Hong Kong (e.g. The Valiant Ones, The Fate of Lee Khan) others in Taiwan (e.g. Dragon Inn) and some were split between the two (e.g Come Drink With Me, A Touch of Zen).

The Valiant Ones was made, pretty much, back-to-back with The Fate of Lee Khan in 1972. Although The Fate of Lee Khan was released the next year in 1973, for some reason The Valiant Ones had to wait until 1975 to see the light of day.

Chaplin Chang was working for King Hu at the time, in the production company offices in Yau Yat Chuen in Kowloon. I met him a few years ago and he told me that these two films had been agreed to be funded by Raymond Chow. Raymond had said he would fund both films and in return Golden Harvest would take full control of The Fate of Lee Khan once complete whereas The Valiant Ones would remain the property of King Hu Productions. Raymond was a renowned skinflint and delayed the funding for months on some pretext or another and it wasn't until he needed to borrow Chaplin for his own production of Bruce Lee's The Way of the Dragon, that Chaplin was able to get Raymond to sign the contracts and issue the first stage of the funding.

It's most likely that because The Valiant Ones remained the property of King Hu that there was a much bigger delay in getting it into the cinemas as opposed to The Fate of Lee Khan that slipped easily into the well-oiled machinery of the Golden Harvest engine.

Anyway, seeing as this is a locations blog, we may as well start off with the major location used in The Valiant Ones: Shing Mun Reservoir. In fact, Shing Mun Reservoir has been a popular location for countryside filming in Hong Kong for many years - particularly throughout the 70s and 80s. A good place to see examples is Andi's Movie Tours blog. Other than the water level in the reservoir, really not much changes here and to top it all off it is quite easy to get to if you are on a nostalgia trip. Shing Mun is definitely in the top five of outdoor filming locations in Hong Kong.

In this film it is the camp of the so-called "Valiant Ones" as well as acting as the location for the two major battle scenes. Most of the filming was done at the north end of the reservoir where there is a large collection of the silver barked trees that you can see below. The reservoir still has a large number of these and it wouldn't surprise me if they were the exact same trees in many cases. You can see on Andi's blog that the rocks haven't really changed much, the only thing is that looks different is the covering of grass that is obvious in the screenshots below.

The Vengeance of Fu Manchu - Christopher Lee (1967) - Shing Mun Reservoir, Tsuen Wan

It's a very quick scene but there is also some action around Shing Mun Reservoir as the rescue party ride their horses through the forest towards Fu Manchu's hidden temple. In the top picture the reservoir dam wall is actually hidden between the slopes above the actors' heads.

I hope to feature Shing Mun Reservoir more extensively when I take a look (sometime soon) at King Hu's classic The Valiant Ones because some key scenes in that film were shot there.