You Only Live Twice - Sean Connery (1967) - Tam Kung Road, To Kwa Wan

We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a diversion. It's our second Bond outing on this site, but officially the first time Bond was seen in Hong Kong. Having said that, unlike Roger Moore in The Man With The Golden Gun, we never really see Connery in Hong Kong, only in a completely unbelievably huge boudoir where he gets shot, and then inside a submarine where he is zipped over to Japan in less than five minutes flat (this could explain why lots of people still believe Hong Kong to be in Japan...).

Anyway, there is a brief street scene as we see the killers and cops rushing into Bonds private meeting.

There appears to be lots of confusion over the location of this scene. Thanks to an online discussion I had been led to believe this was Nathan Road in Mongkok, but now, according to one of the comments below, it now looks as though it is Tam Kung Road in To Kwa Wan.

Anyway, here is what it looks like today and I suspect that the doorway the cops go into was Tam Kung Mansion at 45 - 63 Tam Kung Road.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Bottoms Up, Tsim Sha Tsui

One of Kowloon's former landmarks before closing down and moving over to Wanchai in the mid-00's. Made most famous by being featured on The Man with the Golden Gun in 1974 (although that was then located on Hanoi Road), but its *ahem* cheeky signboard raised more than a few eyebrows back in the day.

The club was located in the basement of 14 Hankow Road until around 2013 when the block it was in (the Mohan's Building, which also housed a service apartment complex called "Han Residence") was  demolished. A new high rise has since been put up in its place and the basement area now occupied by a Starbucks.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Hung Hom Peninsula, Kowloon

A snippet from episode 2 (called The Lost Man) where Eddy (Tzi Ma) and Kelly (Catherine Neilson in overacting mode) head over to a newly reclaimed Hung Hom to deal with a crazy dude carrying a chopper.

The buildings you can see in the background of the top picture are the apartment blocks of Whampoa Garden. The dusty area the guys are driving on became the space that now holds the Harbourfront Horizon Hotel, and actually, right by the water is now where the Hung Hom to TST promenade now sits.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Shek O Road, Hong Kong

Bruce Payne is following some dodgy Triad guys in his Mustang in the first episode: Power Play. The scene involves some nice driving along a picturesque rural road which turns out to be Shek O Road on the southside of Hong Kong Island.

This particular section of the road involves an almost right angled bend towards the east above Tai Tam bay (see location at the bottom of the post). Here's what the same area looks like today courtesy of Streetview.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Wanchai Aerial View

Another one of the series' cityscapes that shows off Hong Kong in all its glory. This time we have what can only be a helicoptered shot taken from above the streets of Wanchai District. The shots, which pans south, starts off over looking the HK Island-side of the cross harbour tunnel and continues across Causeway Bay area. On the first shot we can see causeway bay Typhoon shelter and the tunnel entrance below it. The flat land to the right of the shelter (in reality to the south) is Victoria Park.

 The flyover that snakes away through town is Canal Road West.

Hennessy Road starting bottom left and
Morrison Hill Swimming Pool complex bottom right

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Kowloon Panorama

The problem I am finding with several episodes of Yellowthread Street is that they were filmed in often generic looking side streets that I simply don't recognise - it's compounded by the fact that, actually, my knowledge of streets on HK Island is fairly limited having spend all of my time here living on the other side of the harbour (i.e. New Territories and now Kowloon).

However, there are some nice aerial shots used in the program that give us a brief look at the colony circa 1989/90 (it had a 1990 broadcast in the UK). Here's a nice zooming shot from a Kowloon vantage pointy over to the Island. The angle makes me think this shot was taken from the pavilion on Fei Ngo Shan Road where the road curves north off the ridgeline and down towards the Sai Kung side of the mountain (see the location label at the bottom of the post.

 

Golden Needles - Joe Don Baker (1974) - The Further Adventures of Chaplin Chang.

Chaplin, who many readers of this blog will already know was the Assistant Director on Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon, went on to cameo in a whole bunch of films as well as working behind the scenes - often as an English-speaking liaison for foreign production crews - and here he is popping up at the end of Bob Clouse's second HK-based story, Golden Needles.

I've had the good fortune to meet with Chaplin quite a few times over the past year or so and have heard some great stories about his time in the film industry. He has some really great little anecdotes about some pretty famous people (and he has worked with many foreign and local actors), and as my blog here grows I keep spotting him more and more.  In Golden Needles he played the medical attendant who sees to Elizabeth Ashley's wounds at the film finale.

Golden Needles (1974) - Joe Don Baker - Nathan Road, Yau Ma Tei

Here is one from Golden Needles initially identified as Tsim Sha Tsui due to what I believed was the Golden Crown Court sign centre left (red words on light blue) that says: 金冠大酒樓

It appears that this has been a mis-identification though, and a friendly anonymous reader has commented (see below) that the restaurant sign was in fact for the Noble Crown Restaurant (華冠大酒樓) much further up the road in Yaumatei at the junction with Waterloo Road. Note the single different character at the beginning of the Chinese name (wah instead of gam). In hindsight I can just make out the top character is indeed 華.

So, anyway, we now know that this scene was filmed - looking north - near to the junction with Waterloo Road which means I think the small curve in the kerb in the lower right is the corner of the small nameless service road that leads to the back of Jade Mansion (on the right) and the Ambulance depot beyond. Here is the updated Streetview.

So a big thanks to the helpful anonymous poster for setting me right.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Kui In Fong, Sheung Wan

Just before we see the fight that gets started on Sai Street, we see Brady (played by a very wooden Mark McGann) driving a car down a road pretending to be a buyer but really just trying to see what the girl owner is up to (selling drugs in case you didn't know).

Like in the show, this road is the one that leads down to Sai Street, so when we catch a passing glimpse of the fight that is erupting there between Bruce Payne and the triads, it's not a bad approximation of what you would see in reality - although the place has undergone a huge amount of redevelopment since Yellowthread Street was filmed in the late 1980's (it was shown in the UK in 1990...I think?). The fenced area on the right of the screen grabs is Blake Garden. Here's the modern streetview.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Shun Tak Centre, Sheung Wan

Yellowthread Street seems to have spent a lot of time filming in small streets on HK Island, which is making my location ID's a bit hard. So bear with me. In the meantime, here is a hazy shot looking towards the Macau Ferry Terminal and the Shun Tak Centre rising up on its left.

If you look closely you can see the Star Ferry plying its trade at the bottom of the screen, before much of that part of water was reclaimed. I'm gonna make a stab in the dark and say that the building on the near left was the Harbour Centre in front of Wanchai Star Ferry pier. If so then pretty much all of that harbour area to its right has now gone.

I Spy (TV Series) - Robert Culp (1965) - Siu Lam Kung Restaurant, Hanoi Road

Here's one thrown in as an afterthought, but it is a shot of a rather famous restaurant chain (sadly now defunct since circa 2013) that once had a branch on Hanoi Road.

Unfortunately I don't know what the address was on Hanoi Road, and locating it isn't helped by the complete redevelopment that has gone on in that whole area of TST. But, anyway, I thought I would put this one out there because recently Chaplin Chang told me that this was the very same restaurant where he was first introduced to Bruce Lee just prior to the commencement of filming Way of the Dragon in Rome.

So if anyone can give me an exact address it would be nice to know.

Noble House (Mini series) - Pierce Brosnan (1988) - Kellet Island Cargo Handling Basin, Causeway Bay

This is the cargo basin on the west side of Kellet Island (the eastern side is Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter) and is where we see the Sea Witch in its berth, awaiting Bartlett. Currently the place is a bit of a mess because it is part of the harbourfront reclamation that will see the MTR extended via either the South Island line (which is going to head down to Aberdeen) or the Shatin-Central link. I have no idea which bit they are excavating for at the moment, but suffice to say there won't be much of either the basin or typhoon shelter when they have finished.

 You can just see the Hong Kong Yacht Club building at the back in the lower picture.

Noble House (Mini series) - Pierce Brosnan (1988) - The Tregunter, Mid-levels

Who can forget the destruction of Rose Court both on film and in the book - a fictional event based on a horrific real one that occurred in 1972 along Po Shan and Kotewall Roads. In reality, the fictional Rose Court is actually a rather famous residential development called The Tregunter which, at one point, held the world record as the tallest residential building. The Tregunter actually consists of three blocks staggered up the hill and after initially thinking this was either Block 1 or 2, I am now fairly certain it was actually the - since redeveloped - Block/Tower 3.

A quick look at Streetview shows me that Tower 3 is most likely (for reasons explained here) and you can see the redeveloped entrance along Old Peak Road below.

Noble House (Mini series) - Pierce Brosnan (1988) - Hotel Bela Vista, Macau

Here's a picture I have had to use before when I did a full post on another one of Macau's famous hotels. In this case it is the Bela Vista. At the time of filming this was still operating as a hotel (and commentator Neil MacDonald who later worked with Pierce Brosnan on Around the World in 80 Days told us that this hotel was a major filming location for that later series) and it wasn't until over 10 years later - following the 'handover' of Macau to China in December 1999 - that it was first used as it current occupation as the residence of the Portuguese Consul in Macau.

In the screen grab, the Rolls Royce is driving its occupants along the Avenida da Republica, at the time it was a seafront road, but even that small bit of sea we can see above has now been enclosed into what is now known as Sai Van Lake.

The sea wall remains unchanged however, and here is a Streetview grab from the other side of the new lake. You can see the, now, Portuguese Consul's residence centre screen to the right of the lamppost.

Noble House (Mini series) - Pierce Brosnan (1988) - Marine Pier, Macau

I've bundled these two together because they are essentially the same location, just a small square separating them from each other. The first is the marine pier where Dunross' boat pulls in and ties up.

Back in the late 80's the pier was still just that - a pier - but there has been much development of this area including road construction and now the access to the open water is blocked by a highway called the Avenida Panoramica do Lago Sai Van. In fact the only decent Streetview shot I can get of the pier is taken from this very same highway - it's not completely obvious but the small strip of water where the pier still sits is now completely landlocked.

Across Barra Square is perhaps the second most famous sightseeing spot in Macau - the A-Mah temple. Here it is peeking through the archway of the pier, it's very distinctive with its red-painted walls.