“This is Australia. We’re not allowed to get into that sort of thing, mate!” Adrian Smith looks back at dangerous stunts and kung fu fighting in The Man from Hong Kong...

Right: Brian TrenchardSmith on location

Drugs are coming into Australia from Hong Kong. There seems to be an Australian drug lord at the centre of the operation, and the local police need help: cue the arrival of Inspector Fang (Jimmy Wang Yu) of the Hong Kong police. Using his brain as well as his fists, feet, cars, hang gliders, explosives, you name it, he breaks the rules but gets the job done.

The Man from Hong Kong (1975) was the debut feature film of British-born writer-director Brian Trenchard-Smith. He had moved back to Australia, the country of his father’s birth, in his early twenties, and by the 1970s he had established a successful career making documentaries for Australian television.

Another job was cutting film trailers and he found himself working more and more on kung fu films from Hong Kong. He had the idea to make a TV documentary on the phenomenon that became The World of Kung Fu (1973). This was then followed up with another which was initially going to focus on Bruce Lee. As he was on his way to Hong Kong to shoot this, the sad news broke of Lee’s death, so instead Trenchard-Smith switched focus and made Kung Fu Killers (1974), which included archival footage of Lee alongside interviews with many Hong Kong action stars including Angela Mao, Sammo Hung and Jimmy Wang Yu. There were also on-screen contributions from Western actors currently working there including Stuart Whitman, Chuck Norris and George Lazenby. The interviews were conducted by Australian stuntman Grant Page.

Through making these documentaries, Trenchard-Smith became friends with Raymond Chow, head of Golden Harvest. As he had been developing the idea for a film about a Chinese cop who comes to Australia, which he was going to propose to Bruce Lee, he instead pitched it directly to Golden Harvest.

Raymond Chow liked the idea, although he did insist on a title change. The Yellow Peril was Trenchard-Smith’s jokey attempt to highlight the casual racism of the Australian cops, but it was quite rightly pointed out that audiences in Hong Kong would not see the funny side.

The budget, which was to be split 50-50 between Golden Harvest and the Australian backers, was set at AUD $450,000. Eventually it became a co-production between Golden Harvest, B.E.F. Film Distributors and the Australian Film Development Corporation.

The Australian Executive Producer, David Hannay, was assigned to work with André Morgan. He was aged 24, was fluent in English, Cantonese and Mandarin, and something of a boy wonder at Golden Harvest, where he was Head of International Production.

With the funding in place, and Grant Page, now a good friend, helping to develop many of the stunts that would be used in the film including the paragliding, all Trenchard-Smith now needed was some movie stars.

HARVESTING BOND