Only Two Films Were Ever Shot Inside the Kowloon Walled City

The infamous Kowloon Walled City has fascinated people for decades. Its narrow, dark, secretive alleyways, where criminals and law-abiding citizens lived side by side—prostitutes soliciting customers across the street from priests—have ignited the imagination of many filmmakers.

Numerous films, both in Asia and the West, have depicted either the Kowloon Walled City itself or a reimagined version of this dystopian cluster of shoddily built buildings.

The 1993 film Crime Story, starring local actor Jackie Chan, even features a fight filmed on the rooftops of the Walled City after it had been emptied in anticipation of its demolition. However, in the film, the fight takes place in Taiwan.

More recently, in the Hong Kong movie Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, released in 2024, nearly the entire action takes place inside the infamous Kowloon Walled City, thirty years after its demolition.

In fact, only two films—or parts thereof—were ever filmed inside the Kowloon Walled City during its heyday. In 1984, the last fifteen minutes of Johnny Mak’s film The Long Arm of the Law were shot inside the Kowloon Walled City. Four years later, in 1988, Bloodsport, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, featured a few short scenes filmed inside the Walled City.

The mere fact that parts of these two films were shot inside the lawless Kowloon Walled City is a feat in itself, as it must have involved some nerve-wracking negotiations with the Chinese Triads who de facto ruled the city.