House of Bamboo

We remain far from clear on the nature of game being played by Robert Stack as Spanier, an American goon looking to shake down various Tokyo merchants, but he finally reaches Robert Ryan (his first scene, as Dawson, backed by Cameron Mitchell et al), full of attitude himself, in director Samuel Fuller’s shot-in-Japan House Of Bamboo, 1955.

Gobbling up more Tokyo locations, director Samuel Fuller follows the American apparent thug Spanier (Robert Stack) into the real then-landmark (since demolished) Kokusai theater, though the rooftop scene is from the (nearby) Matsuma department store, then hunting for Shirley Yamaguchi, the wife of a murdered gangster, into a busy bath house, in House Of Bamboo, 1955.

The tail end of the opening with the murder of an American non-comm in a Japanese train robbery, Brad Dexter as American MP Hanson interrogates civilian crook Webber (Biff Elliot) during surgery, which was surely the whole point for director Samuel Fuller, early in House Of Bamboo, 1955, Shirley Yamaguchi the wife in the photograph.

Skewing convention even with his all-news exposition, Samuel Fuller, directing for producer Buddy Adler, Darryl Zanuck and 20th Century-Fox, begins the first American studio feature shot wholly in Japan, with violence and Mount Fuji, in House Of Bamboo, 1955, starring Robert Stack and Robert Ryan.