Forced Vengeance - Chuck Norris (1982) - 180 Nam Shan San Tsuen Road, Sai Kung

In what is almost one of my most flukey finds in the whole 3 years I have been attending to this blog, I have managed to find the actual house used as the Paschal abode in the film. A bit of blind luck, a rough estimate of where it might be and the astonishing fact that it still exists mean that I can confirm it is in Nam Shan village in Sai Kung. Here is a reminder.

It looks as though the pool was actually being built at the time and when you look at the GoogleEarth aerial view (see below) then you can just make out the shape of what appears to be the same pool.

The guesswork was aided by the following picture which shows Inner Port Shelter at the back and a rather familiar little island (the small hump on the left) which is also known as Lap Sap Island. Knowing where we were it was just a case of lining up the angle and then finding a property that fit the other characteristics.

In the film we get to see the parking area/garden in front of the property as well as the limo drives through the gate followed by the rather nice doorway with its shallow arch overhead.

So anyway, here is the only view available of said property. The gate is still there, although the white picket fence has been replaced by chicken wire, and if you zoom in on the front door you can see the door hasn't really changed other than its colour.

For those wishing to make the effort to get there in person, the house is on Nam Shan New Village Road and I have marked it below - but much better to click on the location information at the bottom of this post to see it in Google Maps.

On an aside, if you are the actual owner of this house and had no idea it was once used in a Chuck Norris film, I apologise in advance of any weird looking geeky kids and blokes peering over your gate in attempt to take a photo of it...and, by the way, nice pool. Incidentally, I also went on to discover that Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story was also filmed here in 1993 - it is Bruce's home in that film.

Forced Vengeance - Chuck Norris (1982) - Hirams Highway, Sai Kung

We also see a fair bit of Sai Kung in this film because the Paschal's house is here giving way to lots of scenes of their car driving up and down the roads around the town. Here is the first one from the start of the film when we see Chuck's taxi take him from the airport to the Casino.

Yes, once again movie-land strikes again with its illogical geography. We see Chuck get in a cab at Kai Tak Airport in Kowloon, driving down Hirams Highway in Sai Kung and the arriving all the way back over in Tuen Mun for the casino scenes. I would love to have seen the fare for that particular journey!

In the top picture we can see some steps on the pavement on the right hand side (just to the right of the taxi). That's good because it allows us to identify the stretch of road we are looking at. You can see the same steps in the Streetview picture below (in front of where the blue wall starts).

As the car goes by the camera pans after it to the right and we get the view we see in the second two screen captures. Believe it or not the two buildings behind the red/yellow signage on the right are still around. There is also a third building still around and it is the one on the left with a stepped roof and orange roof tiles in the screen grab. You can just see it in the Streetview below but its now standing by itself and has discoloured somewhat in the last 30 years.

Moving on and I figured we should bunch all these screencaps together because as the taxi makes its way back we get a brief glimpse of Hebe Haven.

Okay, so we are given a big clue as to the location courtesy of the pier in the harbour. It's still there but so is the large white building we can see just at the back. It looks to be a commercial property but is currently empty according to Streetview (with a bog X Dive sign on the front). I'm not a Sai Kung resident and only really venture in to join a dive boat (and I try to avoid the town for much the same reasons I try to avoid Discovery Bay) so don't know it so well but I am sure there are people out there that know what it was or is. Anyway, here is my best approximation of the location.

Forced Vengeance - Chuck Norris (1982) - Dragon Inn, Tuen Mun

What was once a very popular stop off for people travelling around the New Territories via Castle Peak Road near Tuen Mun was turned into the "Lucky Dragon" casino for the benefit of our film. I first heard about the Dragon Inn (容龍別墅) when I read Martin Booth's Gweilo/Golden Boy memoir and you can check out some photos of it (including one sent by Booth's widow, Helen) on David Bellis' Gwulo site here.

The Inn seems to have been some sort of hotel and restaurant combo and was very popular with locals. It is still around, in name at least, and you can see the website here: https://www.1939dragoninn.com/

However, despite occupying the same site, it is not the original building there anymore and the old one looks to have been replaced by a restaurant-only building in 1989.

In our film, we see the original version at various points throughout because the plot revolves heavily around the place and so the following screencaps are taken from various points in the film.

Sadly, Streetview doesn't go all the way up to the building - only to the main gate and so I can't really give you any proper comparisons because I have yet to go there. I don't have a pl;an of the old layout so can only make some guesses about the site. The top photo and the second from bottom show the road leading to the carpark. This road is still intact and recognisable despite the development that has gone on. So here is the modern comparison. There is a retaining wall on the left side of the road that can also be seen on the screencap. However, on the right hand side it has been completely redeveloped with a residential complex called Dragon Inn Court.

This makes me think that part of the old site was given up for redevelopment and the current Dragon Inn probably doesn't fit exactly where the old one was. You certainly can't look down the road, like Chuck is doing in the screen capture, from the current version of the Inn. The GoogleEarth view below shows you where the current building stands, and the road that goes up to it, and the angle on the portion of the road I just showed (which is about in line with where the tennis court is) means the old building probably sat more forward and left from where the current one is (perhaps where the bottom left of my red circle is drawn?). Well, this is just supposition based on the camera angles, I would need an older map (pre-1989) to confirm one way or another.

Forced Vengeance - Chuck Norris (1982) - Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong

I must admit, it took me a long time to like Chuck Norris. In my young eyes he was always the overly hirsute ugly dude who fights Bruce Lee at the end of Way of the Dragon and star of many a below-par film and series back in the US. However, after a recent re-familiarisation with Forced Vengeance (well, and a re-viewing of Firewalker with Lou Gosset Jr), I've seen him in a new light and actually think he is a pretty good actor after all.

Anyway, in 1982, Chuck came back to Hong Kong to star in a film about him as an-ex paratrooper who helps looks after the business dealings of a casino owner in HK. Cue lots of pretty good locales, many of which I have yet to see being used in other foreign-produced movies.

But what better way to kick it off than with a rather excellent early 80's panorama of the harbour shown during the opening credits.

Click on the picture for a better view, but in case you wanted them, the constituent shots are below.

The cylindrical Hopewell Centre on the right 

 Views over Wanchai District

 Looking towards Kowloon Peninsula

 The black building is the Sun Hung Kai Centre (built 1980)

The last picture shows us looking over towards Kowloon Peak on the right and Lion Rock on the left. Bottom of the screen is the AIA building on Stubbs Road. Speaking of Stubbs Road, if I was a betting man (which I'm not, by the way) I would put my money on this scene being shot from the Stubbs Road lookout. 

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Convention Avenue, Wanchai

Back to Rummy's Cut and a quick snippet of an area that is changing as we speak. It's the area right next to the old Wanchai Star Ferry Pier.

When I say "changing as we speak", ongoing harbour reclamation works extending all the way from Wanchai to Central have forced the old pier to close and a new one built at the front of the newly reclaimed harbourfront - about 100 metres further north. The old pier, seen partially in the above screen caps, was just closed on the 29th August 2014. Here is a diagram of the area as it currently stands, courtesy of the Star Ferry company (http://www.starferry.com.hk/en/news20140821).

The walkway over the road is still around and hasn't changed much, but the view we see in the lowest screen capture (above) has completely disappeared thanks to the new Convention Centre - built in time for the 1997 Handover ceremony.

The Dark Knight - Christian Bale (2008) - The Centre, Central

Even though it is the International Finance Centre tower (that's the smaller one of the two) that we know is the HQ of the Chinese criminal (played by Chin Han) and the one that Batman crashes through the window to capture him, it was another building that served as the lobby for the earlier scenes when Morgan Freeman plants the cellphone in the security desk. It was also this other building that we see a police van head towards as the police arrive on the scene to deal with The Batman.

The building in question is The Centre (中環中心) and isn't that far away from the IFC in all honesty - just a few hundred yards at most.

The Dark Knight - Christian Bale (2008) - International Finance Centre, Central

Both towers (International Finance Centre and Two International Finance Centre) feature in the next scene when Batman is preparing to launch his strike at his Chinese target. So, up to the top of 2IFC goes the Dark Knight and he jumps off and after a bit of impressive spinning and flying around, rolls up into a ball and crashes through the windows of the lower IFC1 where his target is located.

The finale of the sequence sees Batman and target being pulled out, up and away from the building by the C130 transport plane that I mentioned in the first film post here.

Of course, most of this was achieved using CGI, but there are pictures of a cabled up Christian Bale standing on a very precarious part of the building for some daytime filming (the scene is set at night so I can only assume they were using filters).

So here we are, with the second film character to leap from the top of 2 IFC (the first one was Lara Croft in case you didn't know).

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Aberdeen Marina Club, Aberdeen

It wasn't long since we were last inside the club for a moment during Fan Tan Man, but we return to the club grounds , next to the "Tropical" swimming pool (at least that's what the club calls it these days) for this episode: Rummy's Cut.

We get a quick view of the boardwalk in the marina as the cops enter the club via what is really the back door (and only really open to people who have their boats parked out the back).

The Dark Knight - Christian Bale (2008) - Midlevels Escalator, Lyndhurst Terrace

This is another scene that made big news in the local papers, however, for some unknown reason The HK Standard now limits its archive to the previous 4 years (previously we could browse articles from about 1994 onward) and so I can't link to anything useful anymore.

Never mind, this following scene filmed on the section of the Midlevel's escalator was actually done with several thousand people all gathered around the road below taking snap shots of the two stars Christian Bale and Morgan Freeman.

The road below them is Lyndhurst Terrace and Gage Street. In fact, there is the odd amateur film on YouTube of Morgan Freeman doing a walkabout along part of Gage Street, but I'm not sure that was filmed or if it was it didn't seem to make the final cut.

Gage Street in the background