A place to share snippets of superfluous trivia about the many Hong Kong movies we all love and adore!

1. The opening music from Tsui Hark's We're Going To Eat You (1980) is a "borrowed" cue from Goblin's score for Dario Argento's Suspiria (1977).

2. A large portion of the score for John Woo's The Killer (1989), attributed to Lowell Lo in the credits, is actually "borrowed" cues from James Horner's score for Walter Hill's Red Heat (1988).

3. Jet Li did not post-synch his own voice until Gordon Chan's Hitman (1998) which, ironically, was his last major Hong Kong feature (the fact that the film is, by and large, pretty dreadful is also widely debated).

4. Sammo Hung's The Moon Warriors (1992) was, in fact, helmed by numerous directors before Hung was brought in to finish the production. It was commenced under Alex Law and Mabel Cheung, who relinquished the reins to veteran action choreographer Corey Yuen, who was joined by Tony Ching on action direction, before it was decided to wrap up the production under Hung's helm as was well known for hemming in and completing "out of control" productions as well as being cost effective.

5. Both Johnnie To and Andrew Kam were sacked from Tsui Hark's production The Big Heat (1988) when Tsui decided neither were delivering what he wanted -- Tsui finished the film himself.

6. Tsui Hark's birthname is Tsui Man Kong.

7. Shu Qi's birthname is Lin Li Hui

That's all from me for now as I'm off to the local Chinese supermarket with my wife to do the grocery shopping, so feel free to join in and share whatever you all know -- I'll be back on and off with dozens of facts.

Well the only thing I know to be a fact: Shu Qi started her career not just going starkers, but with some very revealing (some might say raunchy even) poses It apparently didn't hurt her career one bit

Ralph

2. A large portion of the score for John Woo's The Killer (1989), attributed to Lowell Lo in the credits, is actually "borrowed" cues from James Horner's score for Walter Hill's Red Heat (1988).

James Horner (and Jerry Goldsmith, and Alan Silvestri and John Carpenter) should all receive co-scoring credits for their lengthy associations with Hong Kong cinema! A lot of great Hong Kong B-movies, especially, wouldn't be half as good as they are without the unwitting input from these gents! In fact, Silvestri's title theme from DELTA FORCE backgrounds literally the one good sequence in VENGEANCE OF SIX DRAGONS - a fight scene, of course!

And then there's the bits from Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera that turn up in 1991's HEROIC BROTHERS (which also features Horner, Silvestri and Vangelis!)

But, now that I've heard Aerosmith, Madonna and Guns 'N Roses in FREAKING SPICY KILLER (both dubs), I'm fairly certain we'll never see a bigger pair of copyright-infringing balls than the collective ones swingin' from the producers of that baby.

ralphrepo wrote:Well the only thing I know to be a fact: Shu Qi started her career not just going starkers, but with some very revealing (some might say raunchy even) poses It apparently didn't hurt her career one bit

The Hong Kong Penthouse photospread? I have them on a CD somewhere here...

Brian: Funny you should mention what you did -- I watched the first few minutes of Heaven Yiu's Sworn Revenge (2000) the other day (as I usually give all budget HK DVDs I buy an automatic once-over just in case I end up with the regular amount of faulties) and wouldn't you know it? Dave Stewart's "Lily Was Here", from the film of same name, was playing in the background of a scene with your buddy Simon Lui. At least some of the folk behind the scenes have some decent taste in the music they "borrow"...

Mike Thomason wrote:

ralphrepo wrote:Well the only thing I know to be a fact: Shu Qi started her career not just going starkers, but with some very revealing (some might say raunchy even) poses It apparently didn't hurt her career one bit

The Hong Kong Penthouse photospread? I have them on a CD somewhere here...

Photo "Spread" indeed. If we saw any more we would qualify as gynecologists.

Funny you should mention what you did -- I watched the first few minutes of Heaven Yiu's Sworn Revenge (2000) the other day (as I usually give all budget HK DVDs I buy an automatic once-over just in case I end up with the regular amount of faulties) and wouldn't you know it? Dave Stewart's "Lily Was Here", from the film of same name, was playing in the background of a scene with your buddy Simon Lui. At least some of the folk behind the scenes have some decent taste in the music they "borrow"...

So true... I suppose a lot of producers/directors/"composers" know that the usual synthesizer scores their budgets often allow just can't compare with something like the London Symphony Orchestra scoring yet another gunfight in an abandoned building or some such...

So far my favorite score "borrowing" was Henry Mancini's Pink Panther in Fearless Hyena.

Brian Thibodeau wrote:

Funny you should mention what you did -- I watched the first few minutes of Heaven Yiu's Sworn Revenge (2000) the other day (as I usually give all budget HK DVDs I buy an automatic once-over just in case I end up with the regular amount of faulties) and wouldn't you know it? Dave Stewart's "Lily Was Here", from the film of same name, was playing in the background of a scene with your buddy Simon Lui. At least some of the folk behind the scenes have some decent taste in the music they "borrow"...

So true... I suppose a lot of producers/directors/"composers" know that the usual synthesizer scores their budgets often allow just can't compare with something like the London Symphony Orchestra scoring yet another gunfight in an abandoned building or some such...

The makers of hopeless dud Homicidal Maniac at least showed some hitherto unseen talent with their musical "borrowings" -- there's two instantly recognisable cues from Giorgio Moroder's Cat People score dropped in with alarming regularity. Moroder's score must have been a popular one, as Keith Li's Centipede Horror features a significant number of swipes from it too.

Did anyone else notice that the repetitive musical motif in Johnnie To's Breaking News is actually the Eurythmics "This City Never Sleeps" -- last used to striking effect in Adrian Lyne's 9 & 1/2 Weeks?

One of the oddest musical borrowings I've heard was In The Line of Duty 4's. The music playing over much of the beginning is the theme from Return of the Living Dead. Quite effective and eerie, but an odd choice for a police kung fu flick.

A bit of trivia I've always liked, though it's pretty well known...

The horrendous expression Chow Yun-Fat is giving when he scrunches up his head into his shoulders as a grenade explodes behind him in the climax of A Better Tomorrow 2 (you can see it as a still image on some video/DVD covers)occured because the explosion was too large, and the back of his head was singed.

John Woo, of course, just kept shooting. The scene where CYF mentions the grenades "really pack a punch" was probably added because of this.

the Dragon's Den UK board has a 19-page thread about fascinating trivia, here's the link: http://www.dragonsdenuk.com/cgi-bin/iko ... ;f=1;t=165

After doing some Sirk research (well watched all the extras on Written on the Wind) I found that Douglas Sirk's Magnificent Obsession was a basis for a lot of the plot of John Woo's The Killer.

To all Java developers:

The images (without credit) used in Head First Servlet & JSP are from King Boxer.