The Fighting Dragon - Yasuaki Kurata (1975) - Excelsior Hotel, Causeway Bay

The film tries to trick us into believing that the Excelsior Hotel is in Macau, because this is Lung's next stop as he tracks down the man responsible for hiring the thugs to kidnap the woman at the airport. It looks like the interior scene may have also been shot in the hotel with the obvious view over to Kowloon and Beacon Hill in the distance. Then, the next scene we are back in Macau again.

The Ghost - Julie Lee Wah-yuet (2001) - Causeway Bay Waterfront

Some more library footage, this time it's a nice aerial shot of the Wanchai waterfront around Causeway Bay. The white building in the centre of the top image is the now demolished Excelsior Hotel.

Black Cobra Woman - Laura Gemser (1976) - Talk of the Town, Excelsior Hotel

This last week or so witnessed the closure of the Excelsior Hotel for redevelopment (in fact, for the record, it closed on the 31 March 2019). So I thought it was quite serendipitous that one of the locations from Black Cobra Woman should be the former open rooftop restaurant and bar, "Talk of the Town". This is the "club" where Eva is employed as an exotic dancer and where she later goes for lunch with her new girlfriend, Gerr. The image below shows the view looking across Happy Valley towards Braemar Hill where you can see the (then) new high rises of Evelyn Towers.

It looks as though this roof top terrace was later blocked in by windows because the roof top now appears to be enclosed, perhaps to make it more weather friendly.

Golgo 13: Assignment Kowloon - Sonny Chiba (1977) - Victoria Park Road, Wanchai

Our first introduction to the local police detective, imaginatively called Smith in the English dub (played by Ga Lun - also credited as the co-director), is when he is called to investigate a murder down in Wanchai District. The road is now park of Victoria Park Drive and is right next to the Excelsior Hotel (rumoured to soon be redeveloped) and the HK-side entrance to the cross-harbour tunnel. Both can be seen in the background of these screengrabs.

Revenge of the Pink Panther - Peter Sellers (1978) - The Excelsior (interior), Causeway Bay

As promised, following on from our earlier exterior post, here is some of the hotel interior as seen on film. I shall go out on a limb and say this looks like it was all done on location (rather than a studio recreation) but I'm always open to corrections. 

 The hotel foyer

 This looks like a first floor bar

The lifts

Now, I have never been inside the hotel other than to go to the basement bar many years ago with the various chaps over at Gwulo, and suffice to say I was sufficiently under the influence so as to not really remember much about it at all. So if anyone has any better memories to share, please feel free :-)

Revenge of the Pink Panther - Peter Sellers (1978) - The Excelsior Hotel (exterior), Causeway Bay

Much of the action in Hong Kong uses this famous hotel as its centrepoint, including a rather funny scene (this is the child in me coming to the fore) where Kato wears a pair of ridiculously thick spectacles as a disguise and proceeds to bump into everyone and anything as he charges around the hotel.

Anyway, here is the outside of the hotel, I'll show some shots from the interior in the next post so as not to crowd this post too much.

I did hear a rumour on a Facebook group that the film crew installed the revolving door specifically for the film and then uninstalled it again once filming ended. If anyone can confirm it would be an interesting little tidbit - especially as the revolving door is only really involved in one or two on screen gags. Anyway, looking at this Streetview grab below you can see that buildings next door to the hotel are the same as they were back in 1978 but the Caltex petrol station has gone (though I don't know when).

Incidentally, there was a recent newspaper report that the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group (that owns the Excelsior and is itself part of the huge massive Jardine Matheson Group) had recently had the hotel valued in a view to redevelopment. It caused rather a panic because this hotel is a very famous and familiar part of the HK harbourfront but the company denied it had any intention of selling the land. All is calm at the moment but in HK these days there doesn't seem to be any smoke without fire. Time will tell.