International Prostitution: Brigade criminelle - Jean-Louis Broust (1980) - Sheraton Hotel, Tsim Sha Tsui

Here's a nice view of the Sheraton Hotel viewed from Salisbury Road when the hotel had its name in big letters along the front. I have no idea when this was removed but the place is a bit more subdued these days. The ground floor arcade on the left hand side belongs to the Peninsula Hotel on the opposite side of Nathan Road.

Year of the Dragon

No, not the excellent Michael Cimino film from 1985 (although there was some HK talent in that film), but today marks the start of the Lunar New Year of the Dragon 2024.

恭喜發財!

International Prostitution: Brigade criminelle - Jean-Louis Broust (1980) - Chatham Road North, To Kwa Wan

More street-level To Kwa Wan scenery as the car is now driving north along Chatham Road North close to Shan Si Street. The building with the red/yellow/white shop sign (top image) is Chat Ma Mansion. The odd looking newly cemented structure that veers into view in images 2 and 3 is one of the newly constructed uprights for the East Kowloon Corridor - the flyover that now runs above Chatham Road North. The buildings in the last image sit either side of Kai Ming Street and as far as I can tell all these buildings are still around (for the time being). This is actually the same point in the road where Ma Tau Wai Road suddenly becomes To Kwa Wan Road and is basically a block to the south of the last post.

International Prostitution: Brigade criminelle - Jean-Louis Broust (1980) - Chi Kiang Street, To Kwa Wan

More in-car POV shots as Dega and his newly attached captive are driven to the airport by the police. This particular shot below is looking along Chi Kiang Street. The view today looks surprisingly similar with the only real change being the demolition of the old tenements seen on the left hand side in the first couple of images. Actually, if you use that Streetview link to look at the older images, you'll notice those buildings were still around up until the 2016 images. On the right hand side is the Ma Tau Wan/To Kwa Wan Road Garden which now has the To Kwa Wan MTR exit D in the middle of it.

International Prostitution: Brigade criminelle - Jean-Louis Broust (1980) - Marine Police HQ, Tsim Sha Tsui

The car arrives at its destination, the former Marine Police HQ in Tsim Sha Tsui. This place has changed identity so many times in the last ten years I've lost track. Apparently it's now known as FWD House 1881 (formerly the Hullet House Hotel, formerly 1881 Heritage, formerly the Marine Police HQ). FWD being a local insurance company founded by the son of Li Ka-shing. Li, in case you weren't aware, is the former boss of Cheung Kong who won the contract to destroy the plot of land the building is on to make way for a bunch of high-end jewellery stores. You can never have too many jewellery stores...

Anyway, this is the police base where Dega makes contact with the local police boss who have been able to arrest Marcone and keep him in custody. All Dega has to do is handcuff himself to the suspect and get him on a plane back to France. Simple, right?

There's a nice view of the old sloped driveway on the west side of the (former) hill, as well as some interesting shots in and around the old carpark (now a void filled with aforementioned stores). Note that the view to the former KCR clocktower (top image) is unobstructed because this film was made after the old railway station was demolished, but before the construction of the Cultural Centre.

That's the old Stable Block in the background

International Prostitution: Brigade criminelle - Jean-Louis Broust (1980) - Gloucester Road

The next scene shows the car driving down the section of Gloucester Road that runs alongside Victoria Park. On the right side of the frame are the residential blocks that occupy the block between Kingston Street and Cleveland Street. Just beyond is the Park Lane Hotel and Windsor House.

International Prostitution: Brigade criminelle - Jean-Louis Broust (1980) - Wanchai Interchange

Some street level shots of Dega's car as he is driven from the airport by the local Police reception committee. This is part of the flyover that makes up the Wanchai Interchange located along Gloucester Road. The tall buildings in the background are the Excelsior Hotel and the World Trade Centre. One of which is no longer around.

International Prostitution: Brigade criminelle - Jean-Louis Broust (1980) - Kai Tak Airport

We continue the new year with another one from the semi-erotic genre, this one has an even more unfortunate title: International Prostitution. You get some funny looks from your family when they see this one pop up in the search history.

It stars Jean-Louis Broust as a French policeman, Commissaire Philippe Dega, who is tasked with tracking down a criminal, Tony Marcone (played by Gabriele Tinti - Laura Gemser's ex-husband and co-star of Black Cobra Woman), wanted for the murder of his girlfriend. Marcone has struck his girlfriend and accidentally killed her and then fled to Hong Kong.

Unfortunately the copy I viewed was completely rubbish with a German soundtrack that was about 40 seconds out of sync, so my grasp of the plot is a bit limited. I still have no idea how Laura Gemser figures in all of this but she pops up about halfway through the movie as Tazzi, who becomes Dega's girlfriend.

A nice surprise for me at the end though is Chaplin Chang being credited as "directeur de production". It's not something he ever mentioned to me that I can remember. I have a copy of Chaplin's half-finished memoir, but sadly he only completed it up to and including his time with Enter the Dragon.

Anyway, as expected, Kai Tak features in the film as the plot moves from Europe to Hong Kong and then back again at the end of the film. There is some take-off/landing footage as well as bits from inside the terminal.

Lee Hoi Chuen's Grave, St Raphael's Cemetery

Lee Hoi Chuen (李海泉) was not just famous (in HK, at least) for being a Cantonese opera performer and comedic movie actor, he also gained significant fame in later life (well, perhaps posthumously) because he was the father of Bruce Lee.

Macao V Forbidden (recycling Dick Davol's Macau footage)

I realised that when I posted my recent Forbidden post I had neglected to provide any comparisons to show that the footage used in that movie was simply recycled from the footage Dick Davol had shot for Macao.

I found a couple of screen grabs that provide a reasonable comparison. They're not frame-to-frame matches but you get the general idea. It may just be the print quality available on Youtube, but the original Macao footage (first image) is much clearer. 

Another matching shot is the footage used for the passengers disembarking the ferry. In Macao, the footage is used alone first, and then is repeated for a back-projection shot showing the main characters getting off the ferry. In Forbidden, it serves only as back projection for Tony Curtis' character alighting.

I'm sure there are plenty more examples but I don't have the patience to go through both films again at this point. Perhaps there wasn't any other real Macau footage available to a US studio at the time, and selling/licensing the footage to UIP for Forbidden may have recovered some of the costs incurred in filming Macao (which was a box office bomb). Or maybe the footage was Davol's to license out? He gets no credit on either film though.

Reminder: Macao was produced by RKO and Forbidden by UIP. There's an interesting snippet, for Macao, on the AFI catalog site that says the following:

In May 1948, HR [Hollywood Reporter] announced that Universal-International [UIP] had purchased the screen rights to a story entitled "Macao," which was described as a "post-war story, localed off the China coast.

It has not been determined if the Universal story is related to the RKO picture. RKO purchased Bob Williams' story in Aug 1949.

So perhaps there are closer links between the two films than just the footage? Even though it was shot and released later, it looks like Forbidden was in the pipeline around a year before Macao.

Go Back to China - Anna Akana (2019) - Dr Fern's Gin Parlour, Central

I'm not much of a drinker, or socialiser these days, in fact I'm a miserable old git, so I have no idea about trendy bars etc in Hong Kong. However, thanks to the film's end credits, I know that the scene where Sasha and Carol go out to celebrate together in Hong Kong was filmed at "Dr Fern's Gin Parlour" located in the Landmark Building in Central. It appears to have survived the pandemic nonsense and is still going (at the time of writing).

Go Back to China - Anna Akana (2019) - Ocean Terminal, Tsim Sha Tsui

Sasha takes the boys to Ocean Terminal to take photos and have a feel of other plushy toys on the market. And then the day is finished with a meal on the garden terrace at Hexa - a restaurant located at the relatively new end-section of the terminal.

OK, strictly speaking this image isn't Ocean Terminal,
it's Harbour City with OT in the background

Lunch at HEXA

Go Back to China - Anna Akana (2019) - Victoria Harbour

Next up is another film by Emily Ting who wrote and directed Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong. Called Go Back to China the film tells the story of a young socialite, Sasha (Anna Akana), who is cut off from her trust fund by her estranged Chinese dad, Teddy (Richard Ng), in an attempt to get her to go to China and help him out in the family toy business. Most of the film appears to have been shot in Shenzhen, where the factory is located, but there's a brief glimpse of Hong Kong in a couple of scenes.

First up is a nice view of the harbour as the plot moves to Hong Kong as Sasha, in an attempt to get some trendy design into her dad's plushies, takes the company's two Filipino designers on a trip.

Forbidden - Tony Curtis (1953) - Inner Harbour, Macau

A brief return to the 1950s for this next post. The film is Forbidden and stars a very young Tony Curtis as Eddie, a sort of low-level criminal who has been employed by a much bigger criminal to go to Macau to bring back the gangster's former romantic interest (Joanne Dru). The problem is, the romantic interest also happens to be one of Eddie's former romantic interests as well.

I won't spent too long on this - only a single post - other than to say that this is another studio-based film that has benefited from the real location footage captured a few years before for Macao. The very few scenes involving back-projected footage all use the Dick Davol-shot film. Given that Macao was released by RKO and this film is from Universal International means that the latter most probably bought or licensed the footage from the former (or perhaps directly from Davol?). Suffice to say there are no real on-location shots.