What’s Up, Tiger Lily (1966)
Film Overview
One of the strangest beginnings to any major director’s filmography, What’s Up, Tiger Lily? takes an existing Japanese spy film and turns it into an entirely different comedy through new dialogue, editing and music.
The footage originally came from the 1965 Japanese espionage film International Secret Police: Key of Keys, directed by Senkichi Taniguchi. For the American version, Woody Allen and his collaborators discarded the original story and created an entirely new English-language soundtrack.
The serious espionage plot becomes an absurd search for the world’s greatest egg salad recipe. Secret agents, gangsters and glamorous villains continue to behave with complete dramatic seriousness while the new dialogue gives everything happening on screen a completely different meaning.
Allen also appears in newly filmed introductory material, while sequences featuring The Lovin’ Spoonful were added to the American release.
It remains a unique entry in Allen’s filmography. Rather than directing the original performances and photography, his central creative contribution was transforming an already completed film through writing, dubbing, re-editing and sound.
Watch What’s Up, Tiger Lily?
My Review
It is difficult to compare What’s Up, Tiger Lily? directly with the films Woody Allen would later make because its entire premise is different.
The joke is wonderfully simple: take the images from a completely serious spy thriller and give everyone dialogue about food, sex, gangsters and assorted nonsense. The actors continue to look intensely committed to life-and-death situations while the soundtrack insists that something completely ridiculous is happening.
Inevitably, some of it works better than others. The film often feels closer to an extended comedy experiment than a conventional feature, and the additional material involving The Lovin’ Spoonful firmly places it in the mid-1960s.
But the basic idea remains ingenious. More importantly, there are already signs of Allen’s fascination with disrupting familiar genres and allowing language to completely change the way we interpret what we are watching.
It may be an eccentric starting point, but as the first feature-length film associated with Allen as a filmmaker it remains an essential curiosity in the filmography.
Cast and Characters
Tatsuya Mihashi
The Japanese actor’s secret-agent character is transformed by the English dialogue into Phil Moskowitz, the hero of Allen’s invented story.
Akiko Wakabayashi
Wakabayashi becomes Suki Yaki in the American version, one of the central characters caught up in the hunt for the secret recipe.
Mie Hama
Hama, another major presence from the original Japanese production, becomes Teri Yaki in Allen’s newly invented story.
Tadao Nakamaru
One of the performers whose original dramatic role takes on an entirely new meaning once the dialogue is replaced.
Louise Lasser
Lasser was among the performers contributing to the newly written English-language version.
Woody Allen
Allen appears in newly filmed material that introduces and frames the unusual premise of the film.
The Lovin’ Spoonful give the film its unmistakable 1960s sound
Music plays an unusually prominent role in What’s Up, Tiger Lily?. The Lovin’ Spoonful provide a soundtrack that adds another distinctly American layer to Japanese spy-film imagery already transformed by Allen’s new dialogue.
Pow
The principal theme from What’s Up, Tiger Lily? captures the energy of the film’s transformation perfectly. Its bright, irreverent pop sound becomes an immediate part of the American version’s identity.
A soundtrack created for the American version
The group contributed far more than a title song. Their soundtrack gives the newly created story a musical personality of its own, separating it still further from the Japanese film that supplied the images.
Among the pieces associated with the film are Gray Prison Blues, Pow Revisited and Unconscious Minuet.
The group also appears in additional footage incorporated into the American release.
Gray Prison Blues
One of the original pieces recorded by The Lovin’ Spoonful for the film.
Pow Revisited
The soundtrack returns to its principal theme in another arrangement.
Unconscious Minuet
Another distinctive piece from The Lovin’ Spoonful’s contribution to the film.
National Recording Studios
The band recorded the soundtrack material in New York in April 1966.
Locations
Unlike Allen’s later films, the locations in What’s Up, Tiger Lily? were not selected for the story he eventually created.
Most of what appears on screen was photographed for the original Japanese production. Allen inherited those images and built an entirely different narrative around them.
Japan
The vast majority of the film’s visual material comes directly from the Japanese spy production.
International Secret Police
The streets, interiors and action locations were filmed for the original espionage story rather than specifically for Allen’s comedy.
New York
The transformation was created through new writing, voice recording, music, editing and additional material in the United States.
National Recording Studios
The Lovin’ Spoonful recorded their soundtrack contribution in New York during April 1966.
Awards and Recognition
An Unusual First Feature
The film is generally treated as the beginning of Allen’s feature-directing career, although its unconventional production history makes it unlike anything he would direct afterwards.
A Film Rewritten in Post-Production
Its defining creative idea is the demonstration that dialogue, editing and sound can completely alter the meaning of existing images.
Before Take the Money and Run
Three years later Allen would make his first fully original narrative feature as director with Take the Money and Run.
A Singular Entry in the Filmography
Allen never again made a feature in quite the same way, leaving What’s Up, Tiger Lily? as one of the most unusual films associated with his career.