Three Businessmen - Miguel Sandoval (1998) - Star Ferry to Wanchai Ferry Pier

Well, I have managed to establish a rudimentary ability to continue with a few location posts, despite being under lockdown for 4 of the 6 weeks I have already spent in the UK. I have also managed to get hold of a copy of Three Businessmen, a film directed by Alex Cox who people may know from films such as Sid and Nancy and Repo Man, but who is also familiar to a lot of British movie fans from his long running presentation of Moviedrome.

Anyway, the film starts off with one businessman, played by Miguel Sandoval, arriving in Liverpool and checking into a very weird hotel. He goes down for dinner and meets up wit the hotel's only other guest, played by Alex Cox, and after realising there is no one in the hotel (all the staff have disappeared) they head out to try and get some dinner of their own.

What follows is a rather surreal trip around the world masquerading as streets in Liverpool as the pair wander around chatting about life and going into all manner of establishments and using all types of transport as they search out some food. It's quite entertaining and appears on this blog because of a few short moments when the pair decide to catch a ferry back across the "Mersey" to get back to the hotel.

A quick edit later and the pair have shifted from (what I believe to be) Rotterdam to what appears to be the Star Ferry in Tsim Sha Tsui. They ride to ferry over to Hong Kong Island to the old (and now demolished) Wanchai ferry pier.

Felicity - Glory Annen (1978) - Wanchai Ferry Pier, Wanchai

This one is up for debate but I will stick my neck out and say that I think this is the old Star Ferry pier at Wanchai. It's closed now and a new one located in front of the new reclamation has taken its place, so it's a bit difficult to know for sure, but the position of Beacon Hill and Lion Rock in the distance on the third image seems to tally with the old Wanchai location. Check out the Cat 3 worthy advert in the background. Let's Make a Dirty Movie was a French comedy (French title: Attention les yeux!)
from 1976 that looks as though it wasn't released in Hong Kong until 1978. There is a later still in this film of the front of the Hoover Theatre that shows that it was indeed showing at the time.

Push - Chris Evans (2009) - Wanchai Star Ferry Pier, Wanchai

While we're on the subject of piers (as we were a couple of posts ago) here is one on the opposite side of the harbour. It's the old Star Ferry pier in Wanchai that has now become another piece of old Hong Kong that has gone for good.

Actually, the scene also involves a quick glimpse of the ferry they use to cross the harbour, it's the World Star that went out of service in 2011 (soon after this film was made). The pier itself was decommissioned and demolished in 2014 and a replacement built at the front of the new Central <> Wanchai reclamation waterfront i.e. about a hundred metres further into the harbour.

Despite it being demolished, we can still see the old pier courtesy of the 5 year old Google Streetview captures.