The Street Fighter - Sonny Chiba (1974) - Queen's Road Central, Hong Kong

The final shot for this brief sojourn into Hong Kong is a moving camera shot along Queen's Road Central as the vehicle the camera is in makes its way towards to western limits of the "central" part of Queen's Road. This is approaching the junction with Bonham Strand (on the right) and the curved building straight ahead in is at the far corner of Possession Street. According to Centamap Queen's Road Central turns into Queen's Road West at this very point.

We've seen this section of the road a few times before on the blog, including during this scene for Revenge of the Pink Panther. Okay, the angle isn't the same but there are some common buildings to both including the old shophouse on the corner of Bonham Strand (beige building on the right in the below images) which also happens to still be around today.

The Street Fighter - Sonny Chiba (1974) - Aberdeen Harbour, Hong Kong

From one harbour to another, the next shot in the brief HK-related opening scenes is a shot across the waters of Aberdeen towards the Tai Pak and Sea Palace floating restaurants. Judging from the ornate balustrade top in the right foreground, I would say this shot was taken from the old pontoon location at the waterfront that has since been reclaimed and now has the bus terminus sitting on top of it (today's Wu Nam Street).

The Street Fighter - Sonny Chiba (1974) - Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong

While we are in the land of colour, here are a few shots from the beginning of The Street Fighter with Sonny Chiba. Like Sister Street Fighter, this film's premise engineers some flimsy excuse for starting in Hong Kong (I guess the world was still in the thrall of the previous year's Enter the Dragon and any sort of Hong Kong connection could feed off that) but then uses just a few small establishing shots followed by some studio scenes before high-tailing it back to Japan for the rest of the action.

The opening shot in Hong Kong is this one of the harbour looking over towards the Hong Kong Island waterfront. The tallest building at the time was the China Insurance Group Building. It's still around, on the corner of Connaught Road and Gilman Street, but it's now the short guy in the neighbourhood.

Sister Street Fighter (1974) used some pre-66 stock footage for its establishing shots, but this one can be dated at least after 1967 because that's when the China Insurance Group Building was opened. My knowledge, or lack of, means I can't really date it much better than that, although I believe extreme top right is Realty Gardens, the development that replaced the Mok Villa in 1971. So perhaps this footage was shot specifically for this film. Corrections welcome.