Painted Faces - Sammo Hung (1988) - U Lam Terrace, Sheung Wan

As the boys make their way home from the rice collevtion at the jetty, they stop to buy toys at a hawker stall. The stone steps in the background lead up to U Lam Terrace from Rozario Street. The stone balustrade of the steps has had a bit of a clean up since the movie was made and it also looks as though someone - not very skilled - has tried to repair parts of it much in the same way that the Spanish lady tried to restore that painting of Jesus a few years back. For a better view of how the steps used to look then you can view an image from 1996 on Gwulo that shows a better match to how it looked when the movie was shot.

Painted Faces - Sammo Hung (1988) - Tak Wan Tea House, Central

The tea house where Uncle Ha (Lam Ching-ying) and Master Yu go for a drink is the 得雲茶樓 or Tak Wan teahouse. If you want to see exactly where it was located then the best image to view is one of HK Man's now/then comparisons over on FLICKR. You'll see that it's location was more or less where there is now an empty part of the pavement in front of Grand Millenium Plaza on Queen's Road Central. In fact, if you look at the lower image below, through the restaurant window you can see the bend in Queen's Road Central as it turns south at the junction with Wellington Street and Bonham Strand.

Painted Faces - Sammo Hung (1988) - Lai Chi Kok Amusement Park, Kowloon

The "Seven Little Fortunes" perform regularly on stage at the Lai Chi Kok Amusement Park (荔園).
Luckily it was still around when the filming took place (although it eventually closed in 1997 and the land has since been filled by a large housing development). I can't vouch for the interior stage shots or the later wax museum scenes as Master Yu and Master Cheng (Cheng Pei-pei) have a rather awkward heart to heart, but the main entrance and funfair appear to feature the real thing. The sign in the first image below was the neon sign over the entrance, but in this shot it's filmed from the interior area of the park, so the writing is the wrong way around.

Painted Faces - Sammo Hung (1988) - Shing Wong Street, Sheung Wan

We were here just a few posts ago for Tokyo Gang vs Hong Kong Gang. This is the location where the boys are teased and called "bald headed pigs" by the local school boys before being splashed with water. The troupe is led along Wing Lee Street before they turn up the steps on Shing Wong Street as they are sprayed with water.

Painted Faces - Sammo Hung (1988) - Tung Chi College, Kennedy Road

Our first film of 2022 is a film that I only recently saw, relatively speaking, seeing as it was made back in 1988 and I remember seeing clips of it during Jonathan Ross's now famous episode on Son of the Incredibly Strange Film Show featuring Jackie Chan (filmed circa 1989).

Painted Faces (the Chinese name is 七小福 - chat siu fook - the name of Jackie Chan's former opera troupe, remember them?) supposedly details the daily life of the opera troupe beginning from when Jackie joins them in the early 1960s. Sammo Hung recreates his real life master, Yu Jim-yuen, and the savage beatings they all took when they did stuff wrong or were caught being naughty.

In reality, I believe the opera school was located in Yau Ma Tei in Kowloon but, for the film's setting, the production crew instead utilised an old disused building located in Wanchai.

The building's address was #6 Hau Fung Lane, although later the official address of the place appears to have been changed to 15a Kennedy Road. This weird discrepancy in locations is because it was one of several multi-storeyed buildings/houses that were constructed next to the steep and high terrace that supports Kennedy Road in the Wanchai mid-levels. All these buildings had entrances on Kennedy Road on their top floors (such as the two doors away - #15 - that appeared on this blog previously as a ballet school in Emmanuelle 2) as well as entrances on their ground floors in the steep area behind Queen's Road East. This building had a long staircase connected the top floor with Kennedy Road and I believe this is the one that can be seen in image 3 below.

According to the information on Gwulo.com, the building's former identity was as a Japanese-owned hotel called the "Chitose Hotel" before the war but was later taken over by Tung Chi College circa 1946. One of the comments provides some more recently taken pictures of the site before it was completely annihilated. That link shows it was also used for a film called Shogun & Little Kitchen (伙頭福星 1992) showing it was still around a few years after Painted Faces. In fact, if you keep scrolling on the link, you'll see the author also had already identified the location for Painted Faces as well (using much better Bluray screencaps as well) and so had beaten me to it by quite a few years. Sadly I wasn't aware of this when I started looking. Such is life.

I'm not sure when the building was demolished (historical captures made on Google Streetview in 2009 show it to have already gone) but the whole hillside was cleared to make way for the very controversial Hopewell Centre 2 project that is still dragging on over 10 years after it started. The sole survivor of this redevlopment process (because there was an public uproar when it was threatened) has, so far, been the nearby Nam Koo Terrace which can actually be seen in the background of one of the screencaps below.

This was the lower ground entrance to the college

The building viewed from Hau Fung Lane

Nam Koo Terrace can be seen in the background, left of frame

View of the terrace from the path that runs up from Ship Street

Looking down from the terrace. This path still exists, for now.

Tokyo Gang vs Hong Kong Gang - Ken Takakura (1964) - St Paul's Church, Macau

 The fnal destination for Fujishima and Chang is the facade of the old church. It's here where they meet with Mo (Tetsurô Tanba). Unfortunately I have no idea what happens in the plot here because I only had the Japanese version. Anyway, I believe they discuss plans for the drugs as they walk around the area of the facade. Anyway, bar the unlikely outcome of me being able to identify some really obscure Hong Kong backstreets, I think this is the last post for this film, and the last post for 2021.

So Happy New Year to everyone and let's keep hoping that the world will start to return to normal at some point this year (unlikely for those of us in Hong Kong though).

Tokyo Gang vs Hong Kong Gang - Ken Takakura (1964) - Largo Do Lilau, Macau

After Chang meets with Fujishima, the pair walk to a rendezvous at the St Paul's Church via Largo Do Lilau. This could almost be a complete repeat of the scene shot for Narazumono (I'm still not sure which one was filmed first, but I think it was this one).

Tokyo Gang vs Hong Kong Gang - Ken Takakura (1964) - Rua de Santa Clara, Macau

After Kirahata's mission to Hong Kong, his boss in Japan sends Fujishima (Koji Tsuruta) to Macau to arrange the retrieval of the drugs. Chang meets with Fujishima on a park bench on Rua de Santa Clara. In the background of the lower image you can see the Club Militar.

Tokyo Gang vs Hong Kong Gang - Ken Takakura (1964) - View of the Inner Harbour, Macau

Once the story moves to Macau, we are given a nice view of the Inner Harbour area for the establishing shot, athough the scene is also aided by an onscreen title in case people didn't recognise where we were.

Tokyo Gang vs Hong Kong Gang - Ken Takakura (1964) - 32 Factory Street, Shau Kei Wan

After leaving Chang with the car, Kitahara goes to hand the drugs to Lee Shuka (Yoshiko Mita) a local Cantonese opera star who for some reason has links to the gang (I haven't sussed it out yet - please feel free to comment if you know the plot). He then leaves and crawls out onto the street to die. The location is the end of Factory Street in Shau kei Wan. That's quite an impressive bit of walking with a gunshot wound to the stomach considering he left the car back in Shek Tong Tsui.

The building partially seen in frame is #32. It's one of the area's more aesthetically pleasing buildings due to its age. Most likely a 1950s or earlier build. In general if the build date isn't available (for this one it isn't) then it's a good bet that it's actually pre-war. The occupying Japanese destroyed much of the Colony's paperwork at that time.  The most interesting thing for me from this scene is that it shows where the old waterfront came to because I believe all those stilt houses were constructed on the mud banks of the harbourfront.

Anyway, this is the last Hong Kong location in this film. Although I still have a few Macau locations to post before I'm completely finished with it.

I did actually take a picture of this very building several years ago, but from the road looking up - not quite the angle required to match the film. But anyway, here how it was looking in 2016.