Trivia / The Man from Hong Kong

• Breakaway Pop Hit: "Sky High" by Jigsaw went to No. #3 on the USA Billboard Hot 100 Chart, No. #9 on the UK Singles Chart and No. #2 on the New Zealand Charts. In 1976 in Japan peaked at No. #2 on the Oricon Singles Chart.
• Completely Different Title: The film was released in America as The Dragon Flies.
• Creative Differences: Jimmy Wang Yu and Brian Trenchard-Smith fought each other for control of the film.
  Trenchard-Smith: There was a great clash of personalities, coupled with the inevitable mutual distrust that occurs in a co-production where both sides think the other is trying to rip them off.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • George Lazenby's arm really caught fire during the final fight scene.
  • The fight scene atop of the elevator between Jimmy Wang Yu and Brian Trenchard-Smith allegedly involved real fisticuffs, the punches thrown at the latter allegedly being real punches. Reportedly, the two had a strained relationship during the shoot. As Wang Yu is credited as a co-director in some prints, as such, this movie represents an instance where a film's rival two directors have literary fought it out on the set.
• Hostility on the Set: Pretty much everyone onset disliked Jimmy Wang Yu for his prima donna attitude. He disliked his leading lady so much that he ate flies (or pretended to) before filming a love scene, refused to learn his lines in English, and physically assaulted the director when he filmed his cameo appearance. It got to the point where Roger Ward offered to give him a beating on behalf of Trenchard-Smith. On the documentary Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild and Untold Story of Ozploitation, no-one involved with the production had anything nice to say about him. The animosity supposedly came from Wang Yu's celebrity being practically nonexistent outside of Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the actor's apparent racism towards his Australian counterparts.
• International Coproduction: The production was co-produced between Hong Kong's Golden Harvest films and Australia's The Movie Company and Greater Union with some investment from the Australian Government's Australian Film Development Corporatio (AFDC).
• Money, Dear Boy: George Lazenby admitted in the Not Quite Hollywood documentary that he appeared in the film for this reason, as his prospects following On Her Majesty's Secret Service were limited.
• On-Set Injury:
  • Jimmy Wang Yu was injured during filming when he crashed his hang glider into rocks in Sydney Harbor. He fell 100 feet from the disabled glider onto a sand dune. The accident left him knocked unconscious and he was absent from filming for two days.
  • George Lazenby did the stunt where his arm catches fire and goes on fighting himself - only for it to go wrong when he was unable to get his burning jacket off. The take of him struggling is kept in the movie. He received minor burns to his arm from doing this stunt.
  • A sound recordist was injured during production filming when he broke his ankle whilst a stuntman also broke his foot.
  • Two stunt men were injured in a car crash whilst filming the car chase sequence and they were both hospitalized.
  • Brian Trenchard-Smith had an accident during filming when he was hit in the eye with chemical spray.
• Production Posse: A number of the cast and crew who appeared in this movie had previously worked on the earlier Australian movie Stone (1974). This included actors Hugh Keays-Byrne, Bill Hunter, Rebecca Gilling, Roger Ward, Ruth Erica, Rosalind Speirs and Deryck Barnes as well as a number of technical crew. Both films were produced by David Hannay.
• Referenced by...: The film's theme song, "Sky High", has been referenced a few times in media.
  • The SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Ripped Pants" references this when SpongeBob says in his own song, "But I went and blew it, all sky high."
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean has a Stand user named Rikiel, whose Stand is named Sky High and can control aerial cryptids known as "rods". Curiously, JoJo creator Hirohiko Araki is a fan of B-Movies, and while The Man from Hong Kong is far from being poorly-made, it is relatively unknown in the eyes of the general public.
• Shoot the Money: All the hang-gliding scenes.
• Troubled Production: In addition to having a prima donna leading man, there were several stunt mishaps:
  • George Lazenby got his arm burned and Jimmy Wang Yu was rendered unconscious for two days when he crashed his hang glider.
  • A sound recordist was injured during production filming when he broke his ankle whilst a stuntman also broke his foot.
  • Two stunt men were injured in a car crash whilst filming the car chase sequence and they were both hospitalized.
  • Brian Trenchard-Smith had an accident during filming when he was hit in the eye with chemical spray.
  • During the car explosion featured during the opening sequence in Central Australia after the car rolls over had car-door fly off the vehicle, the projectile missed Trenchard-Smith and the camera unit by about a couple of feet.
  • Many of the cast and crew working at Ayers Rock (Uluru) in Central Australia suffered from heat exhaustion whilst working there.
  • A country house set that had been especially constructed for filming was set fire by vandals during principal photography.
• Wag the Director: Jimmy Wang Yu had previously directed several films in Hong Kong and wanted to be top dog onset, clashing with Brian Trenchard-Smith.
• What Could Have Been: The film was meant to star Bruce Lee.
• Working Title: Yellow Peril.

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