No culpes al karma de lo que te pasa por gilipollas - Verónica Echegui (2016) - View from the Peak Viewing Tower

The first Spanish entry for the blog comes in the form of No culpes al karma de lo que te pasa por gilipollas (Eng: Don't Blame it on your Karma), a romantic comedy starring Verónica Echegui as Sara, a girl whose world gets very complicated when a horde of people suddenly descend on her apartment in Madrid. I am familar with some of the actors courtesy of recently watching some Spanish language dramas on Netflix. Echegui was in Ciudad de sombras (City of Shadows) a murder mystery set in Barcelona and her co-star (and partner at the time) Álex García is in the excellent The Glass Cuckoo (El cuco de cristal). The only sad thing about all this is the fact that Echegui passed away last August (2025) from cancer at the very young age of 42.

Most of the film was shot in Madrid, but during the last third she goes to visit her boyfriend in Hong Kong and the establishing shots are some views from Victoria Peak, most likely from the Peak Viewing Tower given the angle. You can compare the angle with this one in The Gray Man. It's exactly the same. The second image is a close up (of Wanchai area) of the section on the right in the first image.

Yellow Emanuelle - Chai Lee (1977) - The Governor's Walk, Victoria Peak

George is beaten up when he is out with a "girlfriend" (gotta keep it sfw), and wakes up in hospital. As he recovers, he spends some of his time overlooking the views from the "hospital" grounds. The location of the hospital is in a later post but these views were taken far away from it at the top of Victoria Peak. The pathway in the images below is better known as The Governor's Walk because it's a pathway that leads from where the Governor's old summer residence, Mountain Lodge, used to be located. This isn't the only bit of geographical jiggery-pokery that goes on.

The location on the last two images below is marked on GoogleEarth as "Lookout Point" and back in 1977 offered views to both sides of Hong Kong Island. These days, with all the additional foliage, I'd be surprised if you can see anything.

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - Hong Kong Island view

One of the most frequently occurring establishing shots for this series is a nighttime view across the harbour towards the business centre of Hong Kong Island with Victoria Peak in the background. In fact the following shot was used in the first official episode Clear for Action but I have left it out all the way until episode 20, The Hunted, simply because this episode has no other proper Hong Kong locations, it was almost 99.99% shot on studio sets. As well as Clear for Action, this shot can also be seen in The Turncoat (Ep: 9), The Dragon Cup (Ep: 12), Murder by Proxy (Ep: 22) and Love Honor and Perish (Ep: 24)

Challenge of the Tiger - Bruce Le (1982) - The Peak, Hong Kong

I can almost guarantee that anyone who has visited HK has at least been up to Victoria Peak and visited the Lions Club pavilion. We've seen it a few times here on this blog, most memorably from when JCVD was up here doing some moves in Bloodsport.

Brad Harris killing someone with his lethal bicep

And here is the view down to the harbour in 1982. Actually, there is a good comparison between the top shot below and a similar angle in the earlier Bloodsport link that shows just what buildings were constructed in the years between both films.

Battleship - Taylor Kitsch (2012) - Victoria Peak, Hong Kong

As the spaceship crashes into Hong Kong it hits the radio masts at the top of Victoria Peak. This time the Buddha is noticeably missing - a bit of a continuity balls up seeing as it was supposedly right behind Victoria Peak in the earlier shot. Anyway, after crashing on the top of the mountain it then heads straight towards Central to cause a bit more damage.

The collection of houses in the bottom of the top picture is a development called Overthorpe. If you fancy putting yourself in the firing line of a crashed spaceship and buying one of these houses, the last one sold back in 2007 for $88M. That was before prices started getting REALLY stupid.