Robert Stack plays an undercover Army Investigator in Tokyo, Japan, who infiltrates an American mob run by Robert Ryan in "Steel Helmet" director Samuel Fuller's foreign crime saga "House of Bamboo" with Cameron Mitchell, Deforrest Kelly, and Brad Dexter. After hoodlums hit a military train laden with guns and ammunition guarded by Americans and Japanese and kill the only American guard, the U.S. Army dispatches an agent to masquerade as Eddie Spanier. Initially, to find out who his adversaries are, the fake Eddie (Robert Stack of "The Untouchables") tries to muscle in on the pachinko parlors that belong to Sandy Dawson (Robert Ryan of "The Set-Up"), but he doesn't get far before Dawson reports him to the authorities. Once he is out of jail, Eddie shows up at Sandy's place, and they strike an understanding after Sandy informs him that he protects the places that Eddie tried to compromise. Along the way, Eddie makes us of the real Eddie Spanier's Japanese wife, Marito (Shirley Yamaguchi of "Madame White Snake"), and she masquerades as Eddie's kimono.
The action is fast and thick in Harry KIeiner's screenplay, and Fuller provided the original story which he drew from the gritty 1946 thriller "The Street with No Name." Virtually nothing carries over from the American-set "The Street with No Name" to "House of Bamboo" except for the chief villain's use of a P-38 automatic pistol that only he uses when he commits a crime. "House of Bamboo" qualifies as an above-average effort, and Joe MacDonald's widescreen cinematography of Tokyo is a big plus. Indeed, Fuller and MacDonald make maximum use of Mount Fuji. After Sandy takes Eddie into his gang, our stalwart hero makes an enemy of Sandy's second-in-command, Griff (Cameron Mitchell of "Garden of Evil"), who suspects that Sandy likes Eddie too much. Meantime, Sandy thinks Griff has blown his buttons, and he refuses to include him on a major bank heist. Eddie manages to get a note out to the authorities via , but Westerner on the inside at police headquarters alert Sandy about an intruder. Mistakenly, Sandy murders Griff in his bath tub, and then he learn later that Griff wasn't the stooge pigeon.
The notion of an American gang of criminals operating in Tokyo must have seemed unusual at the time, and the setting and the criminals both make "House of Bamboo" a different kind of crime thriller. Fuller and Kleiner provide a modicum of Japanese language, but the dialogue isn't as crisp and incisive as it typically is in a Fuller movie. "House of Bamboo" emerges as an off-beat, occasionally exciting, crime thriller with some gunplay.
The action is fast and thick in Harry KIeiner's screenplay, and Fuller provided the original story which he drew from the gritty 1946 thriller "The Street with No Name." Virtually nothing carries over from the American-set "The Street with No Name" to "House of Bamboo" except for the chief villain's use of a P-38 automatic pistol that only he uses when he commits a crime. "House of Bamboo" qualifies as an above-average effort, and Joe MacDonald's widescreen cinematography of Tokyo is a big plus. Indeed, Fuller and MacDonald make maximum use of Mount Fuji. After Sandy takes Eddie into his gang, our stalwart hero makes an enemy of Sandy's second-in-command, Griff (Cameron Mitchell of "Garden of Evil"), who suspects that Sandy likes Eddie too much. Meantime, Sandy thinks Griff has blown his buttons, and he refuses to include him on a major bank heist. Eddie manages to get a note out to the authorities via , but Westerner on the inside at police headquarters alert Sandy about an intruder. Mistakenly, Sandy murders Griff in his bath tub, and then he learn later that Griff wasn't the stooge pigeon.
The notion of an American gang of criminals operating in Tokyo must have seemed unusual at the time, and the setting and the criminals both make "House of Bamboo" a different kind of crime thriller. Fuller and Kleiner provide a modicum of Japanese language, but the dialogue isn't as crisp and incisive as it typically is in a Fuller movie. "House of Bamboo" emerges as an off-beat, occasionally exciting, crime thriller with some gunplay.