Heisser Hafen Hongkong - Horst Frank (1962) - Peak Road, The Peak

Okay, to make up for the lack of views in the last post, I hope this one is a little better. It's the view from Peak Road looking out towards Lamma island. In this case I can almost match the same angle using Streetview grabs. So once again, many thanks to Streetview :-)

In the above and below pictures, you can see the low wall with the gaps is the same one back in 1962. Sadly, the prominent modern haze prevents us from getting a nice clear picture of Lamma from Streetview - so I shall try and head up in the summer and grab some nicer ones.

This next picture is a little further round the corner (not too far) but you can see the nice views down towards Aberdeen Harbour.

And finally as the car drives past the camera we get a nice clear view over to Mount Kellet. Most of the buildings have been replaced by now. Not surprising really given the fact that this is prime HK real estate here. But it's nice to see that the mid-rise apartment block on the left - Block B of La Hacienda - is still around.

Heisser Hafen Hongkong - Horst Frank (1962) - Yee Wo Street, Causeway Bay

One of many in-car scenes where identification can be difficult and not always worth it due to the very small amount of the location that can be seen, but anyway, this one was easy because of the Paterson Street sign in the background. This means the car was travelling eastbound on Yee Wo Street.

I wonder if the cream- coloured building with the street sign on it is the same one Thomas identified in this post from Shirley's World. He mentioned is was the Dairy Farm depot. That location is about 50 yards down the street from this junction so it might be the same building.

Heisser Hafen Hongkong - Horst Frank (1962) - Lung Yu Restaurant, Kowloon

The Lung Yu restaurant makes another appearance on this blog, this time though it's supposed to be a hotel. If you recall my very first post on this place, back when I was exploring I Spy locations, you'll see that the building it was in (on the corner of Battery Street and Jordan Road) is still around but now houses a bank.

Heisser Hafen Hongkong - Horst Frank (1962) - Kai Tak Airport, Kowloon City

Some nice shots of the airport from this film. In the initial shot we are being told that this plane is leaving Tokyo bound for Hong Kong, but as you can see they just filmed a plane taking off at kai Tak and then another one coming in to land. The landing shot is interesting because it's got a not often used angle from a camera placed between the runway and Kowloon City to capture the plane swooping over the tops of the buildings.

Taking off from Tokyo? No.

The actor with Horst Frank is Tien Feng. A very famous HK actor

I would leave it there, but there is another bunch of screencaps taking in other parts of the airport worth seeing. The following shot shows us looking back towards Checkboard Hill. You can just make out the checkerboard immediately above the guy's head. But what I didn't know is that the hill also used to have a spinning radar dish on top. You can see it just above and right of the checkerboard.

There's also this brief shot of the old Dairy Farm Aircraft Caterers building in the background. I'm not sure where this used to stand before the terminal was rebuilt, but it might be of interest to anyone who was around at the time.

And finally a look towards Beacon Hill at the far end of the Kowloon mountain range. In the mid distance is a housing estate that I'm not sure what it was called but it seems to correspond to where I think the old Lo Fu Ngam Resettlement Area was, but I'm not sure as I thought that was further back, so if anyone can clue me in please feel free to leave a comment. From this angle it looks as though Checkerboard Hill is largely hidden behind the conical hill that holds the Chinese Christian Cemetery.

Heisser Hafen Hongkong - Horst Frank (1962) - Wader Studios, Kwai Chung

The year before Horst Frank and Brad Harris filmed Weiße Fracht für Hongkong they were in HK to film another German potboiler by the name of Heisser Hafen Hongkong (English title: Hot Harbour Hongkong). Once again, Horst Frank plays the baddie whilst Brad Harris takes on the role of a HK Police Inspector.

Coincidentally, after only just recently talking about Wader Studios over on Gwulo.com, the building cropped up at the start of this film standing in for a factory in Japan. The exact location seems to be elusive with various places given but I think the theory that the Wah Tat Industrial Centre was built on the old site holds more water simply because the Chinese name of these buildings is the same as the Chinese name for the studio (華達 - Wah Tat).

 The position might be further confirmed by the third picture which shows the opposite side of the Castle Peak Road. The type of stone shown on the opposite bank is very similar to the road bank opposite the factories today - although there has been extensive further excavation to widen the road and also to create the Shek Lai playground.

The Way of the Dragon - Bruce Lee (1972) - Tin Ping Shan, Sheung Shui

Shooting forward to 1972 and a film I should've covered a long time ago but simply forgot - largely because there is only really one scene that was filmed in an identifiable HK location.

Way of the Dragon was filmed, guerrilla-style, on the streets of Rome (and nearby) with all the interior shots (Chinese restaurant, bosses office, back alley and final fight with Chuck Norris) shot at Golden Studios in Diamond Hill. The exception is this confrontation scene with Bob Wall and Whang In-sik that was filmed in Sheung Shui.

The picture below is a crop from a Government aerial picture (taken in 1973) that I obtained some time ago. It's of the large sandy area where the filming took place the year before. Look carefully at the bottom edge of the picture and you can see a small dark circle. It's a well that can be seen in the background of the second screencap which gives a good idea of where filming took place.

The buildings at the bottom of the picture form part of what was once part of a restaurant and "country club" called the Twin Dragon City Restaurant at the top of a small hill (Tin Ping Shan). The hill, the restaurant and most of the sandy area were redeveloped into the current Woodland Crest residential development and unfortunately for us - as you might be able to tell from my comparison 3D GoogleEarth shot - the area used in the filming now largely sits underneath the private garden and tennis courts of the development.

Weiße Fracht für Hongkong - Dietmar Schönherr (1963) - Kadoorie Pier, Tuen Mun

Much of the film's finale takes place inside the grounds of a ship building company. I'm still in the process of figuring out the exact position but just after the bad guy escapes he can be seen running down Kadoorie Pier with a great view of Castle Peak in the background. The pier is still around but now has a canopy. The map lists it as Castle Peak Pier, I think the Kadoorie name has been attached because of its proximity to the Kadoorie villa on the headland and the eponymous beach next door. 

Weiße Fracht für Hongkong - Dietmar Schönherr (1963) - Stubbs Road, Wanchai

In a very quick scene when the bad guy picks up his female victim (just prior to her being dumped, unconscious, into Lobster Bay) we see them driving down Stubbs Road in Wanchai. The reason I know this is Stubbs Road is because of the appearance in the background of King Yin Lei at #45.

The building is still there of course, but the roof on it is new due to the previous owner, Cheung Chung-kiu, demolishing it in a display of property developer vandalism (in general, the unwritten rules are if you can do as much damage as possible to render the property beyond salvage then less people will complain when you knock it down - taking out the windows to let the rain in is another commonly used ploy). Luckily members of the public manage to help save it by reporting the damage.

On another note, I see that Streetview has images of this part of Stubbs Road from 2017, which means the camera car must be doing some badly needed rounds.

Weiße Fracht für Hongkong - Dietmar Schönherr (1963) - Eucliffe, Repulse Bay

This one is a real treat because this iconic building disappeared a long time ago and it's rare to see decent closeups of the place. It's the Eucliffe mansion that once stood on the western side of Repulse Bay. The residential development that stands on the site is called Royal Cliff and was completed in 1994 but I believe the building itself was demolished in the late 1980's.

The building is famous for being one of Eu Tong Sen's three large HK castle-like mansions (the other two being Euston in the mid-levels and Sirmio on the north shore of Tai Po), all of which have been redeveloped. Eu was the founder of the large herbalist store Eu Yan Sang which can still be found in HK but perhaps the building itself is more infamous for being the location of a gruesome massacre of Allied troops (one of many, unfortunately) by invading Japanese troops.

Anyway, in the film it is supposedly a prison where Dietmar Schönherr and Brad Harris are locked up in before managing to escape. This is one of those posts that deserves a few more pictures than just the usual one or two, so here they are.