Harry's Hong Kong - David Soul (1987) - Tsim Sha Tsui Waterfront, Kowloon

Does anyone remember the time when there was lots of artwork along the waterfront at Tsim Sha Tsui? I can remember when it was empty (I think) during my first few trips in the mid to late 90's, and then  of course just before I moved over full-time it was converted into the "Avenue of Stars". It appears I was too late though to see some of the larger Moore-esque art installations that were set up along the waterfront. I wonder what happened to them?

Harry's Hong Kong - David Soul (1987) - Aberdeen Harbour, Aberdeen

An area that pops up a couple of times is the Shum Wan section of Aberdeen Harbour where Harry goes for a meetup with his girlfriend (of sorts) as well as where part of the plot reveal takes place at the end of the movie. We see the restaurant pontoon area at the end of Shum Wan Drive (last see a few weeks back in Godzilla V Destroyah) as well as the Jumbo restaurant.

The buildings at the back are the Aberdeen Marina Club

Harry's Hong Kong - David Soul (1987) - Ching Chun Koon, Tuen Mun

Harry is waylaid by the local Triad gang because their boss (played by James Hong) believes he was party to the theft of their money by his disappeared buddy. The boss gives Harry a time limit within which he needs to return the money. This meeting between the two occurs at Ching Chun Koon in Tuen Mun.

Harry's Hong Kong - David Soul (1987) - Elm Tree Towers, Tai Hang

Harry's flat is located in a development called Elm Tree Towers on Chun Fai Road in Tai Hang. It looks as though the scenes filmed inside the flat were also done on location because the balcony shape matches one of the building's penthouse balconies. 

Harry's Hong Kong - David Soul (1987) - Tin Hau Temple, Repulse Bay

One of Harry's clients has hired him to find her missing husband and he meets up with her in Repulse Bay in front of the Tin Hau temple, which is masquerading as a cafe.

Harry's Hong Kong - David Soul (1987) - The Peninsula Hotel, Tsim Sha Tsui

The Peninsula Hotel features a fair few times in this show because it's where the main character has his office. It looks as though the room used as a stand in for harry's office is one of the top floor suites in the east or west wing of the hotel. You can tell this by the window shape in the background because only the top floor rooms facing the harbour have he same arched window shape (you may remember that Ryan O Neal and Candice Bergen also filmed in one of these suites for Oliver's Story back in 1978). I guess for a 1980s Aaron Spelling production, hiring one of these huge suites for a day's filming wouldn't have been considered extortionate, but was this also the Marco Polo Suite?

Harry's Hong Kong - David Soul (1987) - Hotel Miramar, Tsim Sha Tsui

Harry spends a lot of his time visiting the Shing Po Night Club (聲寶夜總會). This looks like it was a real place but I haven't been able to locate where it was yet. However, the interior shots for the club were actually filmed at the Miramar Hotel inside the Miramar Theatre Restaurant. This should ring a bell with a few people because I did a post about it quite recently for the French film Banzaï.

As previously mentioned, the hotel was demolished in the early 1990s to make way for the Mira Place shopping mall. The hotel was rebranded to "The Mira" and opened up in a new venue on the opposite side of the road.

Harry's Hong Kong - David Soul (1987) - Former Victoria Barracks, Central

The first major scene in this show is when Harry pops along to visit his policeman friend who is overseeing a parade. I must admit I am not 100% sure about the location here because I cannot find a single image online to corroborate. My gut feeling is that these are part of the former barrack blocks that once lined the hillside inside Victoria Barracks (now Hong Kong Park).

There was a line of five blocks (named Blocks A through E) that once sat where Pacific Place mall now stands and they have been seen on this blog on a couple of occasions previously (Block A was used in Project A and Block D was seen in The Protector).

Unfortunately, finding good images of each of the blocks is difficult and I have yet to see ones of Block B and C so perhaps this is what we are looking at below? If anyone knows one way or the other then it would be great to get confirmation. There are still similar blocks to be found in Hong Kong but they all differ in terms of height, column type, arch shape etc and I can't find any to match the ones below. Perhaps Neil MacDonald will once again come to my rescue... :)

Harry's Hong Kong - David Soul (1987) - Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong

After a rather longer than anticipated break I am back with the start of a show I first was told about a few years ago by one of the staff who worked on it. In case you haven't seen it yet, my blog attracted the attention of Neil MacDonald who once worked for Salon films (at a rather crucial point in time) and he was good enough to answer a few questions and queries and supply the details of some of the productions that have been featured on here.

Anyway, despite there only being some poor quality versions available online to view (one of which is missing the first 5 mins), I decided to finally take a look a few weeks ago. It was meant to be a pilot for a series but was never taken up and now languishes in that limbo of being a TV movie no one cares about enough to give a proper release to. This is a shame because it's actually quite good. For anyone wishing to watch it for themselves, David Soul has the full version embedded on his own site (many thanks to Stephen Monticelli for giving me the heads up).

The story revolves around a private investigator, Harry Petros (David Soul), who appears to be a bit of an old, and rather successful, China hand. He runs his company out of a suite in the Peninsula Hotel and drives around in a Rolls Royce and it's quite clear that he has interests and contacts across a wide range of HK society. An old friend of Harry's turns up dead and the Triads are now after him to get back money that his friend had absconded with. It's got an ensemble cast including Soul's real life future wife, Julia Nickson (this is where they met), David Hemmings, Lisa Lu and the ubiquitous James Hong as a Triad leader. As mentioned by Neil in the link I provided above, Charles Wang also features in a brief role as the morgue attendant/pathologist and Neil as the covered cadaver.

The opening sequence features some harbour-centric views and sequences set to some dodgy theme music (dodgy because it has the required clipped staccato notes that we folks in the West will immediately identify as being "Chinese"...ish).

Godzilla vs. Destroyah - Takuro Tatsumi (1995) - Nathan Road, Kowloon

A final post from Godzilla vs. Destroyah and another quick shot from Nathan Road. This time we are a little further along to the north where Bowring Street joins onto Nathan Road. The camera was placed somewhere in front of the Shamrock Hotel looking north. The glass fronted building on the left is the Pearl Oriental Tower on the corner of Bowring Street.