Monday, June 13, 2005
From 1955, and filmed in gorgeous color and widescreen Cinemascope, Sam Fuller’s House of Bamboo has just been released on R1 DVD as part of Fox’s second wave of “film noir” titles. While not as crazy or as much fun as Fuller’s 1960 masterpieces, The Naked Kiss & Shock Corridor, House of Bamboo is a very solid picture with some fantastic scenes, especially the climatic sequences on a crowded Tokyo rooftop’s amusement park. The plot, dialog and acting is essentially b-movie, but the budget seems to have been a step up. The extensive location filming in Japan certainly is worth the price of admission, and much of it has an almost documentary feel I really appreciated.House of Bamboo remains essentially the often told story of cop going under cover into the mob in an attempt to bust up a group of thieves and murderers. The twist here being that this is a mob of ex-American soldiers operating in the heart of Japan. And while the movie is certainly from a Western perspective, one of the delights of the film is the way it seems to portray 1950’s Japan in a realistic, honest and clear-eyed fashion - surprising for an American film from the era. Fuller not only doesn’t blink at showing the casual (unconscious?) racism of the Americans, but also isn’t afraid to subtlety point out some of the same attitudes from the Japanese. It’s one of the ways the movie seems more objective, and to some extent unwilling to take sides. In fact, even though the “bad guys” are really “bad,” you can also understand the way they feel so twisted up and betrayed by the cop who has snuck into their midst, that they end up cooking their own goose - really losing by mistake instead of being caught by particularly good police work.
While House of Bamboo is hardly a perfect film - it drags occasionally - and some of the acting is a little too wooden (though some may dig that classic b-movie approach) for such a beautiful to look at piece - but fortunately the flaws are minor compared to the rewards. It’s definitely among Sam Fuller’s best films.
