House of Bamboo (1955)

Director:

Samuel Fuller

Writers:

Harry Kleiner (written by)
Samuel Fuller (additional dialogue)

Release Date:

1 July 1955 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Film-Noir | Crime

Plot:

Planted in a Tokyo crime syndicate, a U.S. Army Investigator attempts to probe the coinciding death of a fellow Army official.

Plot Keywords:

Train | Beautiful Woman | Remake | Racial

Cast

Robert Ryan	...	Sandy Dawson
Robert Stack	...	Eddie Kenner aka Spanier
Shirley Yamaguchi	...	Mariko
Cameron Mitchell	...	Griff
Brad Dexter	...	Captain Hanson
Sessue Hayakawa	...	Inspector Kito
Biff Elliot	...	Webber
Sandro Giglio	...	Ceram
Elko Hanabusa	...	Japanese Screaming Woman

Runtime:

102 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Japanese

Colour:

Colour

Aspect Ratio:

2.55 : 1

Sound Mix:

4-Track Stereo (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

USA:Approved (certificate #17450) | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15

Filming Locations:

Tokyo, Japan

Company:

Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation

Trivia:

Sessue Hayakawa's dialogue was overdubbed by the US-born actor Richard Loo.

Quotes:

Sandy Dawson: Who are you working for?
Eddie Kenner: [posing as Eddie Spanier] Spanier.
Sandy Dawson: Who's Spanier?
Eddie Kenner: Me.
Sandy Dawson: Who else you working for?
Eddie Kenner: Eddie.

Movie Connections:

Featured in The Men Who Made the Movies: Samuel Fuller (2002) (TV)

Soundtrack:

House of Bamboo

Technical skill props up lame story

This cops and robbers caper is set in Tokyo, and the colorful street life (not to mention Mt. Fuji) adds a great deal to the interest of this film.

That being said, the film really isn't that interesting. I think Fuller must have known how lame and full of holes the story was. The dialog was pure shlock: "keemona girl" Mariko tells Robert Stack "It's not you, it's me" when explaining that she can't go on living with him to protect him from smart-smart-smart-stupid crime boss Robert Ryan. (Ryan has every angle figured except who the real mole in his organization is and what to do when cops are after you--climb to the roof and shoot more bullets than one gun [or five guns] could possibly contain.)

In Douglas Sirk's hands, this would have been camped up to the max. Fuller is not quite the director Sirk is. Instead of excess in his characters, he goes for excess with his sets and camera work. Lots of overhead and skewed-angle shots, for no apparent purpose that I could understand. He does a superb job of capturing local color (presumably part of the film was shot in Japan), provides no subtitles for the copious amounts of Japanese that are spoken (still quite understandable to a nonspeaker, however, through action), and uses Mt. Fuji to great scenic effect. The climax recalled to me the great chase on Mt. Rushmore in North by Northwest (perhaps Hitchcock was influenced by House of Bamboo), though it occurs in an amusement park.

Fun to see "Bones McCoy" DeForrest Kelly as a mobster whose sole purpose seems to be to hand cigars out to Ryan's friends. Some homoerotic subtext--Ryan violates his rule to kill any of his gang who is wounded during the commission of a crime, ordering his Ichiban (first officer) to save a wounded Stack from a heist scene.

I can't exactly recommend going out of your way to see this film; it's not that great and it's not even very campy. But it is a skillful piece of technical film making, and worth a look if you have the chance.