Car action has always been a defining ingredient of Hong Kong cinema’s hell-for-leather stunt work. Here, we look at some stunt car classics from over the decades.

1. Aces Go Places (1982)

Aces Go Places may have been a wacky comedy – but it was a wacky comedy with cars, motorcycles… and hang-gliders.

Legendary daredevil, stuntman and car stunt choreographer Blackie Ko Shou-liang doubled for Sam Hui Koon-kit in the motorcycle scenes and became instantly famous when he drove straight through a glass store facade in Tsim Sha Tsui East and landed on the road below.

Ko, a motorcycle ace who first became a stuntman in Taiwan, was invited to work on the film by director Eric Tsang Chi-wai and went on to have a prolific entertainment career in Hong Kong.

The last part of Aces Go Places features many notable car stunts, beginning when Hui and Karl Maka are trapped in their silver custom car – a kind of cheapskate Batmobile – by a fleet of enemy vehicles.

A hand grenade soon disperses them and leads to one of the funniest car stunt sequences ever, when the duo take on the assailants with remote-control models that pursue their targets and explode underneath them. No special effects were used here – the cars really do blow up!

One great shot, captured in slow motion with no cuts, features Hui – or rather his stunt double – leaping fully over the roof of an oncoming vehicle and landing on his feet behind it.

There is also an amazing waterside stunt where a car flies through the air and lands on the bonnet of a stationary vehicle – you can see the stunt driver hanging on for dear life – followed quickly by a shot of a car launching over the seafront and crashing into a yacht.