Heroes Two - Alexander Fu Sheng (1974) - nr Wong Chuk Yeung, Sai Kung

Another popular filming site for Shaws, and indeed many movies throught the 1970s and 80s, was the plateau above Three Fathoms Cove in Sai Kung District. It's also been featured on the blog on multiple occasions previously, but by far the most popular post for it in the one I did for The Young Master where the only way Lung (Jackie Chan) can beat his opponent (Whang In-sik) is by getting completely stoned on bong water.

In this movie, this is the location of the final fight between the rebels, led by Fong and Hung, and the Ching general and his minions. The location is now completely overgrown now, as are many former filming sites simply because of the shift away from these outdoor locations during the 1980s.

Dirty Tiger, Crazy Frog! - Sammo Hung (1978) - nr Wong Chuk Yeung, Sai Kung

Here we are back again at another of the popular filming locations from 70s- and 80s-era kung fu movies. This is near the fire lookout at Wong Chuk Yeung. As explained recently, it's completely overgrown now and unrecognisable, but you can get reasonably close via a nearby trail. This is where the fight between Tiger, Frog and White Brow Monk (Lee Hoi-sang) takes place.

View to Three Fathoms Cove in the background

Dragon's Claws - Lau Kar-yung (1979) - nr Wong Chuk Yeung, Sai Kung

The next film comes courtesy of a Youtube channel called Cinema No. 8 - HK Movie which has a ton of HK movies in HD to watch. I have no idea if it's a legitimate outlet for these movies but these channels appear to have better luck in avoiding the YT copyright algorythms than my own (I've had about 5 movies removed in the last couple of months, some of which have been up for several months). You can watch it here.

Anyway, this is a sort of cash-in on the style of movie made popular by Jackie Chan in the late 1970s, similar down to the use of Wang Jang Lee as the main antagonist. The main role is played by Lau Kar-yung - nephew of Lau Ka-leung - who actually does a fairly decent job in his role as a cocky son of a kung fu master who learns a new style of kung fu (from a beggar - sound familiar?) in order to defeat his family's mortal enemy. The best thing in this film, for me, was seeing a young Yuen Qiu do her stuff. She's really underrated and it's a shame it took until Kung Fu Hustle for wider recognition.

Also similar to those other films is the film's opening scene as Wang Jang Lee takes on an opponent at the familiar location near Wong Chuk Yeung in Sai Kung. It's been featured in so many films already and I am sure many more I will cover in the future. As I explained on other posts, I have been up to investigate this area but it is now completely overgrown and unrecognisable. In this film we see it for the opening and finale fight scenes as well as a mid-film scene where Lung saves a woman from being robbed and attacked by a couple of bandits.

Mr Vampire - Lam Ching-ying (1985) - Nr Wong Chuk Yeung, Sai Kung

Once again I have Jonathan Ross to thank for my introduction to Mr Vampire as it was one of the movies screened on Channel 4 in 1990 for the short run of "Chinese Ghost Stories". This wasn't long after Ross's "Incredibly Strange Film Show" that featured the likes of Tsui Hark and Jackie Chan, so it was a boon to UK-based HK film fans at the time.

The film really stands the test of time and it's such a shame that Lam Ching-ying died so young (age 43) in 1996. Lam stars as Uncle Ko, a Taoist priest, who runs a funerary and spiritual services business in a small Chinese town. He's employed by a wealthy businessman to exhume his father's body for reburial but on exhumation discovers that the corpse has not decomposed and is most likely a vampire/zombie. The vampire (played by a heavily prosthetically disguised Yuen Wah) subsequently breaks loose and wreaks havoc on the town before Ko and his two novices are able to defeat it. There's also a small subplot that involves one of Ko's novices (played by Chin Siu-ho) getting seduced by a ghost (Pauline Wong).

According to wikipedia, most of the sets were constructed in Taipei including the houses and the temple where the film's characters live, as well as the red brick street that features in a few of the scenes. Watching the film it's quite obvious that the street set was based on the red brick buildings that can still be found on Di Hua Street today (you may remember a post I did on The Sand Pebbles). However, there are at least two locations in Hong Kong that I can identify and so worthy of posting about here. The first will be very familiar because I have covered it a few times in recent weeks - it's the flat area of ground near to the fire lookout at Wong Chuk Yeung. This is the scene when the coffin containing the vampire is first exhumed. The grave was obviously a prop. The last but one image shows the view looking north towards Tolo Harbour, showing a similar view to the one seen in The Blood Brothers (in that link see the second image down of David Chiang).

This is the view looking towards Tolo Harbour in the north

Drunken Master - Jackie Chan (1978) - nr Wong Chuk Yeung, Sai Kung

Drunken Master (醉拳 - tseoi kuen in Canto lit. 'drunken fist') is probably one of the earliest Jackie Chan films I saw circa 1988. Hong Kong films were so hard to get hold of in the UK at the time and much of my fascination with these films was kept alive through the pages of Combat magazine which I bought religiously every month between 1986 and 1991. Anyway, thanks to like-minded friends I met during my A-levels I was finally able to watch an English dub of this movie via a dodgy bootleg and watched it over and over.

The story revolves around Wong Fei-hung (Jackie Chan) who misbehaves to the point where his dad brings in a strict "uncle" (everyone's an uncle in Hong Kong) called So Hat-yi (蘇乞兒 - aka Beggar So played by Yuen Siu-tin) to discpline him as well as teach him the "Eight Drunken Immortals Fist". Wang Jang Lee plays the hired hitman that has been contracted to kill Wong's father and we are introduced to him in the open sequence as he retrieves his next hit from a secret altar and then goes to kill him.

Much like Knockabout, many of the rural locations seen on this film are hard to track down because Hong Kong has developed so much in the interim. One of my later posts will show how a location that had already become unrecognisable when I posted about it years ago, has changed again. That said there are some recognisalble places that we can talk about including this first one. It was a piece of flat open ground up in the Sai Kung hills that has been used by film makers on multiple occasions. I have been up here looking for the exact spot but can confirm it was completely overgrown when I was there, but this was a few years ago so perhaps it is worth a revisit soon. It's not far from the fire lookout.

The Blood Brothers - David Chiang (1973) - nr Wong Chuk Yeung, Sai Kung

The Blood Brothers is a Chang Cheh bare-chested male actioner (he was very much into that sort of thing) that is loosely based on the assassination of Ma Xinyi - a Hui Muslim official who was involved in the eventual suppression of the Taiping rebellion in the later stages of the Qing Dynasty. In the film, Ma is played by Ti Lung and the story is told in flashback as his assassin, Chang Wen Hsiang (David Chiang), is brought before the courts and writes his confession before sentence is pronounced.

In the film, Ma's assassination is a direct result of his affair with Chang's sister-in-law and the subsequent plot and murder of her husband, Huang Chang (Chen Kuan-tai). Whether or not this is true remains unknown, but historically Chang Wen Hsiang was indeed the man caught immediately following the assassin. What isn't really known is the true motivation, so Chang Cheh has used a significant amount of artistic license, as usual.

Anyway, the first location is taken from Chang's reminisences as he recalls for the court when he and his brother first met Ma. They are bandits waiting in the hills for unsuspecting victims and Ma happens to ride by on his horse but is too skilled for them to rob him. HK film fans will already be familiar with this location because it is the same place used for later films such as The Young Master, Mr Vampire and Snake in the Eagle's Shadow. This is the former open area close to where the Firetower now stands near Wong Chuk Yeung in the Sai Kung hills.

Snake in the Eagle's Shadow - Jackie Chan (1978) - nr Wong Chuk Yeung, Sai Kung

Next up is Snake in the Eagle's Shadow. About a year or so ago, Bey Logan posted some screen caps on the Gwulo website asking for help identifying some locations for a new book he is writing. Unfortunately, I wasn't much help at the time (although I did point him in the way of a couple of places, like this one) but as luck would have it, my trusted UK film source, AP, who has supplied me with copies (legitimate, I hasten to say) of many of the films I have covered on the blog (huge thanks to him for all the help over the years) had sent me a HK Legends DVD of Snake in the Eagle's Shadow a while ago and I thought I would have a go.

As it turns out, not only have I been able to track down the locations sought after by Mr Logan, but I have also added a few extra ones, at least enough of the important ones to make it worthy of including here on the blog.

Sadly, several of the people involved in the film have passed away very recently: Peter Chan Lung, Roy Horan and (just this week) Dean Shek, so it's nice to look at this film again and remember these three great actors.

Anyway, first up is not one of the sought after locations because this one is easy. It's the lcoation from the opening scene where Master Chao (Fung Hak-on) fights Master Shang (Hwang Jang Lee) in defense of the snake style. Fans of the genre may recall that this location is the same one seen in the finale of The Young Master. I did make the effort to reach the spot a few years ago only to confirm that, like many other abandoned locations, it has become overgrown and inaccessible and a large portion of it has a Fire Lookout built on it.

The Young Master - Jackie Chan (1980) - Nr Wong Cheuk Yeung, Sai Kung

The finale of The Young Master takes place on a hillside for which we are given a few clues as to the true location. The first clue is the unmistakable view of the West Dam of High Island reservoir in the background of many angles. Here are a few for starters:

The dam wall pretty much faces a westerly direction so we can assume this location is somewhere NW. Next we can see the hillsides behind some of the closeups of Whang in Sik. Anyone who is familiar with Sai Kung's ridgelines will perhaps recognise some familiar shapes here in the form of Pyramid Hill and Bendy Hill (Wan/Kau Kuk Shan).

 Pyramid Hill is to the left of Whang in Sik

In the above shot we see the pointy bit of

Bendy Hill and (just) Ma On Shan to the right

Speaking of Ma On Shan, here is a shot of it from the angle of Sai Kung. Of course this gives us a fairly decent triangulation of where this scene was filmed. However, since I haven't walked up this particular hill (yet) I can only give an approximation of where it is.

Coupled with a few more shots that give us glimpses over the hills to the Tolo Channel away to the north (and even a brief view of Pat Sin Leng), it appears that JC and his crew traipsed up to a small area called Wong Chuk Yeung. At the top of Chuk Yeung Road the hillside flattens out considerably and the clues in the picture point to somewhere to the east of the village - near to the fire lookout. Possibly close to where Stage 4 of the Maclehose Trail passes. The proximity of the road means the film crew would have had no problem driving all their equipment and actors up there on a daily basis (this scene undoubtedly took a long time to shoot).

The scene of course ends with JC turning superhuman thanks to the wonderful anaesthetic powers of bong water.