Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - 180 Nam Shan San Tsuen Road, Sai Kung

Here's one that I should have done years ago but I only recently realised it was a location I already knew about. I uploaded the Yellowthread Street series to Youtube a while back (see here) and noticed that one episode, The Red Pole, had been blocked due to music copyright. Anyway, after a rewatch (and edit) I realised that the house where the final attack by the triad takes place is a house we have come across a couple of times on the blog before. It's the large Spanish villa that was seen in both Forced Vengeance, where it is the house of Josh's employer, and in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story where it stands in for 41 Cumberland Road.

In this episode of Yellowthread Street, we see a bit more of the interior, especially the downstairs, compared to the exterior.

If you click through on the Forced Vengeance post you'll notice some interesting comments. One of which appears to be from the current owner/occupier of the house who mentions the swimming pool (under construction during the filming of Forced Vengeance) has been turned into a fish pond. However, I have no idea who lived there when all this stuff was filmed. Perhaps someone related to Salon Films?

Yellowthread Street on YouTube

Just as I am between films right now, I thought I would make a quick announcement to Yellowthread Street fans. I am finally getting around to uploading all of the episodes onto my YouTube channel. I haven't done it before now because 1. I am lazy and 2. I was worried about copyright strikes. However, after experiementing with the first episode the copyright only seems to affect certain songs, which YouTube allows me to erase without affecting the dialogue.

So, I will be uploading an episode every week (or so) for the next couple of months and you will be able to watch them here for the foreseeable future (notwithstanding any takedowns I am issued by Yorkshire TV et al). This series is long overdue a proper remaster and home media release.

Link here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRWqaY0tHFgXhXIUzSXUsTw1BCq8OOW5P

Don't forget you can peruse the various locations I have identified for each episode via the Regarding TV Series page (just scroll down).

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Canton Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

A quick look back at episode 7 - Rummy's Cut - has revealed another location I missed out the first time. I have no idea why because its location is quite obvious as being the pedestrian bridge that spans Canton Road between the Silvercord Centre and what is now the Marco Polo Gateway Hotel. Also, it appears directly before this location which (almost) makes sense. Anyway, here it is. Not much has changed in the intervening time.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Waterloo Road, Kowloon

Another Yellowthread Street location recently discovered, this time from Episode 5 - Angel Eyes. It's an opening shot of a road filmed as it's getting dark. The shops signs weren't much help this time but the layout of the road ahead made me think of Waterloo Road close to the intersection with Nathan Road. Actually, the opening image turned out to be a little west of Nathan Road at the junction with Shanghai Street. Most of the buildings seen in the images can still be found.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - I Feng Mansion, To Kwa Wan

Another discovery from looking again at Yellowthread Street has revealed this location from the sixth episode, Fan Tan Man. It's I Feng Mansion in To Kwa Wan and by the looks at it we are looking through the gap between Blocks C and D towards the front of Mei King Mansion facing Lok Shan Road

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Former Regal Kai Tak Hotel, Kowloon City

The former Regal Kai Tak Hotel still stands but is now called the Regal Oriental Hotel. When the airport was still in operation, and for a good few years after it closed, the hotel was connected to the terminal via a pedestrian bridge. The bridge has appeared on this blog previously during the posts for Bruce Lee in G.O.D: Shibôteki yûgi. It also pops up in episode 3 of Yellowthread Street.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Sau Mau Ping, Kowloon

The opening scene to episode 3, Key Witness, takes place on top of a hill in Sau Mau Ping. There are a few clues to the location including the presence of the old Sau Mau Ping estate in the background of the scenes with Bruce Payne, the view of the Anderson Road Quarry behind Robert Taylor and finally a quick glimpse of a car escaping down what is now On Sau Road just below the service reservoir.

In the top picture below we can see the slightly taller Sau Ming House on the Sau Mau Ping Estate. The estate was largely demolished in phases throughout the 90's but Sau Ming House remains at the moment. It's handy because it gives us an approximate position of where Payne must have been for this scene and it lines up quite nicely with the hill that now supports the recently constructed On Tat Estate.

Anderson Road quarry at the back

In the lower picture you an see what was once the service road for the reservoir (Sau Mau Ping High Level Salt Water Service Reservoir - located up the slope on the left) but since the construction of the On Tat Estate has become a proper road connecting the estate with Po Lam Road.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Hanaevilla, Tung Shan Terrace

Another one from the Yellwthread Street archives. This one is from the Episode 4, Middleman. It's the location where the ex-wife of the hostage taker lives. It's a grand old building called Hanaevilla on Tung Shan Terrace but is accessed via a sloped driveway from Stubbs Road area. We've seen it only once (briefly) before on this blog for a post a while back for Detonator 2: Night Watch. The building was constructed in 1959 making it quite a rarity for HK.

1989 Construction of Greencliff in the background

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - D'Aguilar Street, Central

A bit of in-between-films time gives me a chance to go over old stuff and see if I can recognise anything that was missed previously. So here is a blast from the past and a zoom back to 1989 and the very first Yellowthread Street episode (called Power Play). One of the very first scenes in the series was Eden (Bruce Payne) having a drink in a bar before heading out and witnessing a man being chased by a gang. It looks to me as though Payne is walking down D'Aguilar Street (although since this was filmed the retaining wall at the back has been upgraded with smaller bricks) and stops at Wing Wah lane where he sees the chase.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Wharf Road, North Point

It's been a while since I largely finished with Yellowthread Street locations, but this one particular place left me and others quite stumped. It's the site of the AMF Superbowl that I couldn't seem to track down. Here's the reminder.

It's where Eden goes in and starts shooting up the bowling alley with a big shotgun - as you do - from the very first episode, Power Play. Anyway, many thanks to AP for tracking this one down via an old map, from 1994, over at the HKU website which gave details of a superbowl centre at the Provident Centre on Wharf Road. A quick look on Streetview reveals the same locations seen in the top picture has since been remodeled and the superbowl has now become a subterranean branch of the local supermarket, Park N Shop.

So many thanks to AP for finally solving this 1+ year mystery.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Angler's Beach, Sham Tseng

In I Knew a Man, the last episode of Yellowthread Street, Vietnamese refugees are dumped overboard a vessel when a police operation to apprehend the people smugglers (the leader was actually played by 70's kung fu film stalwart, Lo Lieh) goes awry. The bodies of the drowned are washed ashore on a beach.

Believe it or not, the green spit of land you can see above (with HK Island in the far background on the top left) is actually the northern coastline of Ma Wan island - Ngau Lan Tsui (牛欄咀). It's barely recognisable today courtesy of the Park Island development and the Tsing Ma bridge now spanning the channel to the left of it.

The beach (called 釣魚灣泳灘 in Chinese) is still here but there has also been much more development right behind it beyond the treeline largely due to the widening of Castle Peak Road (which also affected the original front wall of Dragon Garden a little way up the road from here) and the construction of several large residential developments along the coastline including Sea Crest Villas.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Tsuen Wan Chinese Permanent Cemetery, Tsuen Wan

The final scene from the whole Yellowthread Street series was shot at the Tsuen Wan Chinese Permanent Cemetery. We've seen it before on this blog because the film makers behind Contagion also used it as the location for the ransom exchange.

Riviera Gardens behind Chan and Lonnen (brand new at the time)

As you can imagine the cemetery itself hasn't really changed at all, but the background has seen extensive development. The lower picture shows Tsing Yi in the background. The southern end of it (on the left) has now become completely taken over by reclamation for Container Terminal 9 - this is the same area where the famous QE wreck was.

The bridge at the back is the original Tsing Yi Bridge - the first bridge to connect the mainland with Tsing Yi Island. It has since been doubled (another bridge built parallel and used for Kowloon-bound traffic) to ease the burden on the original which opened in the mid-70's. It has also been complemented by a closer bridge called the Cheung Tsing Bridge and in the far distance connecting the southern end of Tsing Yi to West Kowloon is the newly built Stonecutters Bridge (remember that since this show was made Stonecutters Island has been joined on to Kowloon via reclamation).

The chimney at the left is the old Kwai Chung Incinerator chimney. It closed in 1997 but the chimney stayed up for another 10 years while they cleaned the surrounding land up of the various poisons that had built up over the years.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Cheung Chau, Outlying Islands

As we slowly wind down the look back at Yellowthread Street (I've already done 70 posts for it - the highest count for a single show on this blog so far), here are some locations from the very last episode I Knew A Man.

Head-cop Vale (played by Ray Lonnen, who passed away just last year in 2014) heads out to Cheung Chau to try and find the culprit behind a bunch of illegal immigrant drownings.

Of course, first he has to head to the Outlying Islands ferry pier...

...and then we get treated to the very familiar (well, to me at least) view of the centre of Cheung Chau Island as the ferry pulls in. 

The lower picture is of course the view looking from Cheung Chau towards Lantau Island in the background.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Wong Nai Chung Road, Happy Valley

Another shot from Big Circle when Pak (Tzi Ma) gets dropped off by the mysterious gwailo. The area is just outside of St Paul's Catholic Primary School - you can just see the sides of the entrance in the screen capture.

The area pretty much looks the same now as it did back then - perhaps a little cleaner and greener now, but that could just be a result of the video quality of the screen captures. You can even spot the same metal door at the top of the driveway (to the left of Tzi Ma's head in the lower pic).