Police Story 2 - Jackie Chan (1988) - Kar Wo Lei, So Kwun Wat

The gang's ramshackle factory building where they are holding May was most likely constructed just for the movie. I say this for three reasons: the first is that it gets completely destroyed at the end of the film, secondly, it looks temporary anyway (I expect most of the interiors were filmed elsewhere), and finally, aerial imagery of the area it was located in 1988, and just prior to, shows an empty space where you would expect to see a factory. However, if you know differently please feel free to comment.

Anyway, I managed to pin down the factory to an area near Tuen Mun called Kar Wo Lei. These days there is a small village development called Nim Wan Tsuen there, but back in the 1980s it was a sandy open bit of ground. The chimneys in the background belonged to the Lok On Pai Desalination Plant, which is still used to this day (minus the chimneys) as a large studio space (for example, I believe that Jet Li's scenes in Expendables 2 was filmed inside as well as Dead or Alive: Final and many more films I haven't covered).

Look carefully in the last images and you can see the flat reclaimed area that was shortly to become the Gold Coast Hotel and Resort area in the lower left.

Noble House (Mini series) - Pierce Brosnan (1988) - So Kwun Wat, Tuen Mun

I can remember Thomas identifying this next location several years ago, but for some reason when I moved my blog, this one was forgotten about. The location is the one where John Chen's body is dumped after the bungled kidnapping. The big clue here was the building at the back that belonged to the Koon Lam Vegetable Marketing Co-operative Society. It looks as though the Vegetable Marketing Co-operative society was/is part of a larger organisation, the Vegetable Marketing Organisation, that was set up post-war to encourage local farming as a way to help recovery from the occupation.

The Koon Lam branch ( the name on the building reads from right to left : 管欖區蔬菜產銷有限責任合作社 ) was situated in So Kwun Wat, now part of Tuen Mun District, and you can see an old picture of it on the VMO website. But here it is back in the 80's when it was the site for a fictitious murder/body dump.

Unfortunately for me, So Kwun Wat has undergone a significant amount of development since the filming and the whole area has seen not just small house development, but also large residential developments and even a couple of large schools. All this means that finding the exact location of this little building is a bit difficult, but judging from a few visible landmarks I think it is safe to say that it stood on the side of So Kwun Wat Road. If you compare the mountains at the back of the second from last picture, you can see they match with the ones in the Streetview below.

And the hillock behind Gordon Jackson in the bottom picture looks very much as though it is the small hillock that is now hidden behind the Mrs Cheng Yam On Millenium School at the far end of So Kwun Wat Road.

Anyway, perhaps someone out there can be more exact, but for the moment I have marked the location along So Kwun Wat Road behind the Avignon development.

Knock Off - Jean Claude Van Damme (1997) - Gold Coast Piazza, Hong Kong Gold Coast Resort

A place that crops up several times throughout the film is the Gold Coast Piazza. It's fairly recognisable due to its columns, balustrades and window awnings. I would say it has had a bit of a makeover since 1997 though.

Noble House (Mini series) - Pierce Brosnan (1988) - Pearl Island, Tuen Mun

Heading back to Noble House for a moment to the scene of the prisoner release at the HK/Chinese "border". The mid- to late-80's was probably not a great time to try filming at the real border in Lo Wu so the production team used another location as a stand-in. It just so happened to be the causeway leading over to Pearl Island off what is now known locally as the Gold Coast (named after the resort hotel and residential development built there) but is actually part of So Kwun Wat. The scenes were actually filmed on the island, looking back towards the mainland. The chimneys at the back were part of a desalination plant further down the coast, now gone.

Check out the ridiculously fake fortress on the opposite side

Note the second screen grab. The film makers had to hide the various developments on the mainland coastline and did this by superimposing a rather grim-looking fortress on top of it.

Unfortunately for us, because Pearl Island contains private residential developments, the Google Streetview car didn't make it to the island side of the road, all we have is this view below looking over towards the island from Tsing Lung Road. At the other end of the causeway is where the filming took place in reality. We just have to use our imaginations a bit :-)