Dead or Alive: Final - Shô Aikawa (2002) - Lei Yue Mun

A fair bit of the film appears to have been shot in and around the various small villages that sit around the Lei Yue Mun headland. Getting definitive locations from these images is difficult without going there and wandering around all day, so I'll just say that the top image was taken somewhere at the southern tip of the headland because that is Hong Kong Island in the background.

Dead or Alive: Final - Shô Aikawa (2002) - Yau Lai Estate, Yau Tong

When Honda goes for his meeting with the Mayor (who has a penchant for skinny boys with saxophones) they usually meet in what looks like a building site. It turns out that it was indeed a building site, one which was turned into the Yau Lai Estate in Yau Tong. The identifying feature that helped me pinpoint this location is the building in the background of images one and two. It's the St Antonius Primary School on Yau Tong Road.

Dead or Alive: Final - Shô Aikawa (2002) - Former Marine Police HQ, Tsim Sha Tsui

One of the real gems of this film in terms of locations is the use of the old Marine Police HQ for the main police station where Officer Honda works. Miike took the opportunity to use the place when it was in a state of complete emptiness and looking rather neglected and dilapidated. Of course, it has since gone on to become the rather gaudy Hullet House/1881 Heritage shopping mall.

We get a fair amount of interior scenes of the main building, as well as a couple of scenes shot inside the round time ball tower, a brief scene on the roof and also at the side where the garages are. Perhaps there are some former HK Police and Marine Police members who are able to identify some of the interior locations within the building.

Inside the roundhouse

Dead or Alive: Final - Shô Aikawa (2002) - Saigon Street, Yau Ma Tei

In film you can make everything look like anything and Miike takes this pedestrian subway and turns it into the front entrance of a school attended by Honda's son. In reality this is the underpass that connects both parts of Saigon Street in Yau Ma Tei. That's Nathan Road in the background with an urban taxi heading southbound.

Dead or Alive: Final - Shô Aikawa (2002) - Mei King Mansion, To Kwa Wan

For that gritty future Yokohama look, the director went to a location that has been seen quite a bit on films in this blog: Mei King Mansion.

Dead or Alive: Final - Shô Aikawa (2002) - Hang Hau Wing Lung Road, Sai Kung

New year, new film and this time back just a few years to 2002 when Takeshi Miike was in town to direct a dystopian (ish) scifi thriller, Dead or Alive: Final, starring Shô Aikawa as a former battle cyborg wandering around Yokohama. In fact, it was entirely shot in Hong Kong. The film starts at the family home of Officer Honda (Riki Takeuchi), a Yokohama police officer responsible for rounding up gangsters and people with illegal pregnancies - births are Govt regulated in the future.

Anyway, it looks to me as though the location for Honda's house is located along Hang Hau Wing Lung Road in the Clearwater Bay area of Sai Kung District. It's hard to see from what's publicly available online but I think this is House 4 of Wing Lung Villas. Google Streetview shows the same 6-pane window of that house and matching wiggly ceiling decorations here (you need Chrome to view, I think).

Ein Sarg aus Hong Kong - Heinz Drache (1964) - Tai Tam Tuk Reservoir, Tai Tam

The finale of Ein Sarg aus Hongkong takes place in some weird almost lunar looking landscape as you ca see in the top image. However, this is in fact the Tai Tam Tuk Reservoir. The reason it looks like this is because this era in the early to mid-60s was one of severe water shortages in Hong Kong. 1963, not long before this film was made, saw the water supply being rationed to only once every four days and as a result the reservoirs at the time were almost empty. Remember, this was before either the Plover Cove and High Island reservoirs were constructed and before there was a guaranteed supply (of increasingly dubious quality these days) from Mainland China.

The distant hill in the background of the second image is Mount Butler and Siu Ma Shan.

Ein Sarg aus Hong Kong - Heinz Drache (1964) - Unnamed Hill, Jardine's Lookout

Following on from the final verification of the previous location, it appears that the hilltop fight between Heinz Drache's character and various Chinese thugs took place on a small hillock that has since been levelled and redeveloped into a development called No. 111 Mount Butler Road. This residential development was constructed in 1980 so this hilltop was already gone 40+ years ago. The Tai Hang Freshwater Service Reservoir is also on this same hill but I'm not sure when it was constructed. The ridge line in the background of the lower two images is Braemar Hill (part of).

Ein Sarg aus Hong Kong - Heinz Drache (1964) - Moorsom Road, Jardine's Lookout

Welcome to 2020 and for my first post of the year I figured a trip back to a film I initially looked at a few years ago, Ein Sarg aus Hongkong (A Coffin from Hong Kong). The online availability of the Mapping Office's aerial photos has been a real help in finally allowing me to pinpoint this location.

Taking Jardines Lookout as an approximate starting point, I was able to look at 1963 aerial images and it appears that the building in the background was part of a residential development that has since disappeared and been replaced by Cavendish Heights. In fact Blocks 6 & 7 of Cavendish Heights now occupy exactly the same space as that older block in the screencaps.

The road the car is driving along appears to be an earlier version of what became Moorsom Road. Back in the 1960s the road actually joined up with Clementi Road on the other side of the hill (behind the camera position) but the link between the two has since been pedestrianised and turned into a walking path whereas the modern route of Moorsom Road now curves the other way back down to join with Perkins Road. If anyone knows the name of this older development, it would be great iof you could let me know via email or comments.

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - Gloucester Road, Wanchai

In a previously unused bit of footage for this final episode, The Runaway, we see Lloyd Bochner driving his police car along the Wanchai waterfront. You can just make out a white blur amongst the water facing buildings along Gloucester Road which is the still standing Wanchai Police Station (on the left side of the first two images) which means the curved building marks the junction with Fleming Road.

In a wonderfully prescient nod to current events in Hong Kong, Bochner stops outside a dive bar on the Wanchai waterfront called "Carrie" as he continues his search for a missing female. This is not the first time that the words "missing female" and "Carrie" have been used in Hong Kong since the anti-Govt protests started in June 2019. Just sayin'...

I'm just guessing but the bar's location in 1960 seems to tally with the current Dah Sing Financial Centre in the block between Fleming and O'Brien Roads.