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House of Bamboo (1955)
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Overview
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Director:
Writers:
Release Date:
1 July 1955 (USA)
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Plot:
Planted in a Tokyo crime syndicate, a U.S. Army Investigator attempts to probe the coinciding death of a fellow Army official. full summary | full synopsis
Plot Keywords:
Train
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Beautiful Woman
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Remake
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Racial
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User Comments:
Noir meets Noh: Fuller's remake of Street With No Name
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Cast
(Complete credited cast) | Robert Ryan | ... | Sandy Dawson |
 | Robert Stack | ... | Eddie Kenner |
 | Shirley Yamaguchi | ... | Mariko |
| Cameron Mitchell | ... | Griff |
| Brad Dexter | ... | Capt. Hanson |
| Sessue Hayakawa | ... | Inspector Kito |
| Biff Elliot | ... | Webber |
| Sandro Giglio | ... | Ceram |
| Elko Hanabusa | ... | Japanese Screaming Woman |
Additional Details
Parents Guide:
Runtime:
102 min
Country:
Color:
Aspect Ratio:
2.55 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
4-Track Stereo (Western Electric Recording)
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Filming Locations:
Fun Stuff
Trivia:
According to Samuel Fuller, originally, Gary Cooper was to play the role of Eddie Spanier. But because he was too well known in Japan he could not act incognito among passers-by without being recognized so Robert Stack, a less popular actor at the time, was chosen instead. However, according to STEP BY STEP sheet by script writer Harry Kleiner written in November 1954, the names of Robert Stack and Victor Mature were listed.
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Movie Connections:
Featured in The Men Who Made the Movies: Samuel Fuller (2002) (TV)
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Soundtrack:
Serenade in Blue
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FAQ
This FAQ is empty. Add the first question.more (32 total)
Message Boards
Discuss this movie with other users on IMDb message board for House of Bamboo (1955)| Recent Posts (updated daily) | User |
|---|---|
| First film to be shot in Japan after the war? | match5566 |
| B-Movie with Ambience | frequency-2 |
| An Outdated Bit of Gloss | popgun9 |
| An Outdated Bit of Gloss | popgun9 |
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In the mid-1950s, using the same screenwriter (Harry Kleiner) and cinematographer (Joe MacDonald) as in the original, the unpredictable Samuel Fuller remade 1948's The Street With No Name as House of Bamboo. For starters, he set in not in anonymous Center City but in post-war Japan -- the first American movie filmed there since the Second World War.
Even in color, Fuller's Tokyo has a grey, slummy look to it, punctuated only by women in blood-red kimonos shuffling through the Ginza. It's an open city where vice flourishes and where ex-G.I. Robert Ryan runs a string of pachinko parlors as a cover for a crime ring. Military investigators and Japanese police tumble to these activities when a U.S. guard dies during a train robbery. And thus enters Robert Stack, sent by the army to infiltrate the gang and solve the murder.
Fuller deals his cards from a deck shuffled differently from his predecessor, William Keighley (who directed Street). It's not clear at the outset who Stack is, keeping us off-balance for a while; there's also a cross-cultural love affair between Stack and Shirley Yamaguchi, the widow of a slain gang member -- Ryan's standing orders are to leave no wounded to tell tales. A twisted erotic charge links Ryan to his pursuer; hinted at in the original, here it deepens the dynamic of Ryan's jealous obsession with his "ichiban," or favorite lieutenants.(There are enough sliding rice-paper screens to fill all of Douglas Sirk's movies with metaphorical barriers, too.)
Far from merely capitalizing on the 50s fad for shooting on locations around the newly opened globe, Fuller seems to construct another metaphor -- for the Occupation of Japan as exploitative, parasitic. Luckily he doesn't press this too far, and House of Bamboo stands as an offbeat, deftly made crime thriller from late in the noir cycle -- albeit with Mount Fujiyama squatting serenely in the background.