blanche-2 I love Woody Allen, and "What's Up, Tiger Lily" was his directorial debut. Unfortunately for me, it was just okay.Allen took a Japanese spy film from 1965, Key of Keys, a sort of Japanese James Bond film, removed the voice track, and replaced it with one concerning the quest by two factions for the perfect egg salad recipe.Some of this was quite funny, but for me it became boring. And I think I saw the original version, not the one TCM shows which is supposedly rewritten to be politically correct.I have to agree with one reviewer - if more time had been spent on this by Allen - if he had, in fact, written and directed the film and then the removed the soundtrack and replaced it, making it a different story, I think it would have been funnier.It's okay, and I love watching the actors' mouths during the dubbing - it's great.

Joe Bob Jones There is no chance that Tiger Lily has "lost it's luster" with age. In fact, you can see it's influence on the Police Squad genre of absurd discordance, Farrelly brothers crudity, South Park, Robot Chicken, and any other irreverent, politically incorrect gutter swamped comedies. It is so funny from start to finish (except for those Lovin' Spoonful inserts) that you won't even hit all the jokes with two viewings. Watching What's Up Tiger Lily is better than bong hitting your way through Big Bambu on tape, in a dorm room, when you hear new jokes every single time you laugh through it. Far better. That Allen and company layered so much satire and subtlety in one film is astounding. There is no reason to explain the plot, as there really isn't one, but that is not the point. This is absurd to the extreme, and you can't sell me enough egg salad to prove otherwise. Get baked, and bust your gut watching it. You will never forget your first Tiger Lily...

Bogmeister MASTER PLAN: must get recipe for egg salad. The premise is simple enough: take a standard movie thriller from Japan and remove the original sound track. Then, dub in your own wacky dialog. This ends up as the most unusual parody of the James Bond-type spy action of the sixties, with Japanese actors of the time voicing silly, inane sentences, usually in an overly silly style. One sinister henchman, for example, speaks in the style of a bad Peter Lorre imitation, way over-the-top. The whole thing is hit-or-miss: if you're really into awful Lorre imitations, you'll probably be giggling; if not, you'll just find that aspect, well, kind of stupid & tiring. A lot of the intended humor stems from just listening to some weird, juvenile guttural sounds or snickering seeming to emanate from the actors on screen; of course, that's the illusion: the actors you see had nothing to do with all the strange noises you hear. So, the main question is how clever was Woody Allen and his 'staff' of voice actors in adding on their interpretations of what passes for funny? It was hit-or-miss, about 50/50. There's also the problem of all those insertions of The Lovin' Spoonful singing for no reason except to fill up time. That doesn't do much for the pace of the film.The film begins with a standard action scene from the original Japanese film and it's not that bad, involving a flame thrower and then a 'lady-in-peril' scene, with some exciting fights. It actually looks like the conclusion of the film. We suddenly switch to Woody Allen, seated in a nice office with an interviewer, as he explains his vision of re-authoring a film. Allen's one big scene is pretty amusing and he pops up briefly later, as well as at the conclusion. The movie itself doesn't make much sense and is hard to follow. The hero, some kind of agent, encounters femme fatales and various villains, all in the pursuit of a code describing the ultimate egg salad recipe. The hero gets into some fights, always yelling stuff like "Saracen Pig!' and 'Spartan Dog!' It may sound funnier than it actually is. He's also good at pulling carpets out from under the feet of bad guys, which may have been funny in the original film, as well. Many of the more clever bits involve the dialog of the villains, who put a very strange spin on some of the threats they make, such as a special camera that takes pictures which removes the clothes from the subjects. The ending has some genuine thrills. The main connection to the Bond films, however, is that two of the actresses here also appeared in "You Only Live Twice" a couple of years later. Hero:6 Villains:7 Femme Fatales:6 Henchmen:5 Fights:7 Stunts/Chases:5 Gadgets:3 Auto:4 Locations:7 Pace:6 overall:6

Merwyn Grote Back during the Colorization Wars of the 1980s, Woody Allen was uncharacteristically public about defending the history and artistry of his craft against those who were eager to take old black & white classics and turn them into digitized coloring books. Chief among the foes of the cinematic art were Ted Turner, who had used his power as a media mogul to buy up control of a huge backlog of films by MGM, RKO, Warner Bros. and other studios as fodder for his cable TV channels. Whether as philistine or shrewd capitalist, Turner hoped to prolong the money-making life of old movies by making them look vaguely newer through color. Of this, Woody said, "To change someone's work without any regard to his wishes shows a total contempt for film, for the director and for the public." To which Ted replied "WHAT'S UP, TIGER LILY?" It was not a question.And unfortunately, Ted had a point.Once upon a time, WHAT'S UP, TIGER LILY? was a 1965 Japanese spy movie called KOKUSAI HIMITSU KEISATSU: KAGI NO KAGI (a.k.a., INTERNATIONAL SECRET POLICE: KEY OF KEYS). The low rent U.S. studio, American International Pictures, bought the rights to the film and, apparently realizing they had a hibachi-cooked turkey on its hands, they decided to try to salvage the project by turning it into a comedy. Fresh from his experience as writer and actor in WHAT'S NEW, PUSSYCAT, Woody was offered the opportunity to try directing -- well, re-directing -- by re-writing, re-editing and re-dubbing KEY OF KEYS into TIGER LILY? And the film's James Bond-style story about missing microfilm became a wise-cracking farce about the search for the perfect egg salad recipe.It may never be known if KEY OF KEYS was/is a good film, but it is apparent that for all of his efforts, Woody couldn't save it for American audiences. Rearranging the scenes and putting smart alec remarks and inane non sequiturs into the unsuspecting mouths of the actors must have been fun and maybe even an educational experience for the neophyte filmmaker. The result it like a 3-D MAD Magazine satire or a trial run for the type of comedy that would make its breakthrough with AIRPLANE! and THE NAKED GUN. But in the end, TIGER LILY isn't all that funny, or at least not consistently funny. For every good chuckle there are a dozen lead balloons and too much of the dialogue is used to explain the convoluted plot. If appearances are anything, the reconstruction of the film was a rush job and it all was done on the cheap.So the interesting thing about TIGER LILY is not its value as art or entertainment, but the ethics behind it. You can't blame Woody for taking on the project; it must have been a challenge and it was certainly an opportunity to move his career into a new direction. But, as the Ted Turner situation would make apparent, TIGER LILY is not the film that the makers of KEY OF KEYS had envisioned. That is not to say that in its original Japanese form, the film was a CITIZEN KANE or a MALTESE FALCON or even a MANHATTAN, but whatever it was, Allen greatly altered the way it would be experienced by most of the world. Of course, Woody never claimed that his version of the film was meant to replace or even compete with the original, but just the same he negated another director's work.If anything TIGER LILY is a lesson in both the plastic and the fragile nature of film as an art. Whether with mischief or malice, a little imagination can alter not just the tone of a film but its message and its vision. And as the BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN parodies that made their way to Youtube.com proved, you don't even have to be a professional to become a re-director.A further irony: AIP found Woody's cut of the film too short for theatrical release and they again reedited it to add some more footage and a few faux music videos by The Loving Spoonful. You can even tell in the final cameo that he makes at the end of the film that Woody's own voice has been redubbed by someone else. This angered Allen, who felt his work had been violated, and it motivated his drive to become a director who protects his work from unwanted tampering. But one wonders if Senkichi Taniguchi, the director of KEY OF KEYS ever saw WHAT'S UP, TIGER LILY? --and whether or not he ever forgave Woody for what he did to it.