Ever wonder what happens when you take a hyper-serious Japanese spy thriller, rip out the audio, and replace it with jokes about egg salad? Honestly, it sounds like something a bored teenager would do on YouTube today. But in 1966, this was a radical, high-stakes gamble that basically birthed a new genre of comedy. What's Up Tiger Lily isn't just a weird footnote in film history; it’s the bridge between old-school vaudeville and the meta-humor of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
It was Woody Allen’s first time in the director’s chair—sorta. He didn't film the action. He just hijacked it.
The Recipe for a Recipe
The project started when American producer Henry G. Saperstein acquired the rights to a 1965 Japanese film called International Secret Police: Key of Keys (Kokusai himitsu keisatsu: Kagi no kagi). The original movie was directed by Senkichi Taniguchi and was actually a pretty stylish, legitimate attempt at a James Bond clone. It had the suits, the gadgets, and the gorgeous "Bond girls"—including Akiko Wakabayashi and Mie Hama, who literally went on to star in the actual Bond film You Only Live Twice the following year.
Saperstein realized the movie was too derivative to succeed as a straight action flick in the U.S. markets. He needed a gimmick. He hired a young, rising comic named Woody Allen to "fix" it. Allen’s solution? Ignore the original plot entirely.
Instead of a secret microfilm or whatever the original spies were chasing, Allen’s version turned the movie into a frantic search for the world's greatest egg salad recipe.
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How They Actually Did It
The process was grueling. It wasn't just a quick dub. Allen and his team, including his then-wife Louise Lasser and writing partner Mickey Rose, watched the footage on a loop. They had to match the English jokes to the lip movements of Japanese actors who were saying things about international espionage and death.
- The Hero: Tatsuya Mihashi becomes Phil Moskowitz, a "lovable rogue."
- The Villains: Shepherd Wong, an egg salad addict, and Wing Fat.
- The Stakes: A nonexistent but real-sounding country needs the recipe to put itself on the map.
The dialogue is a relentless barrage of puns, Yiddish-inflected wit, and fourth-wall breaks. At one point, Allen even appears on screen to explain to the audience that the movie they are watching is a "definitive spy picture." It’s a total lie, of course. He’s messing with us from the jump.
What's Up Tiger Lily and the Battle of the Edit
If you’ve seen the movie, you might notice some weird shifts in tone. That’s because the version we have isn't exactly what Allen wanted. He originally turned in a one-hour cut intended for television. The producers liked the concept so much they wanted it in theaters, but it was too short.
Without Allen’s permission, they went back into the vault. They grabbed footage from another Japanese film in the same series, International Secret Police: A Barrel of Gunpowder, and shoved it into the middle.
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Then they added musical numbers by The Lovin' Spoonful.
While the band was at the height of their fame with hits like "Summer in the City," their presence in the movie is jarring. They pop up in "intermissions" and perform songs like "Pow!" that have zero connection to the egg salad quest. Allen was furious. He actually sued to stop the release, but eventually, they settled. The result is a patchwork quilt of a movie—disjointed, chaotic, and oddly charming.
Why It Still Matters (and What It Got Wrong)
You can't talk about What's Up Tiger Lily without acknowledging that it hasn't aged perfectly. Some of the humor relies heavily on 1960s stereotypes about Asian culture that feel pretty cringey today. It’s a product of its time—a moment when American audiences viewed foreign cinema through a very narrow, often condescending lens.
However, from a technical and creative standpoint, the movie was a pioneer. It pioneered the "re-dub" subgenre. Without Phil Moskowitz, we probably don't get:
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- Mystery Science Theater 3000
- Kung Pow! Enter the Fist
- Bad Lip Reading
- MXC (Most Extreme Challenge)
It showed that the relationship between sound and image is fragile. If you change the words, you change the reality. That's a powerful tool for a satirist.
The Stripper at the End
The movie ends with one of the most famous non-sequiturs in cult cinema. As the credits roll, China Lee (a Playboy Playmate) performs a striptease on one side of the screen. On the other side, Woody Allen sits on a couch, eating an apple and chatting about why he put her in the film. It has nothing to do with spies or egg salad. It’s just Allen being a provocateur, signaling that the "rules" of filmmaking were officially broken.
Actionable Insights for Film Fans
If you’re planning to track down a copy of this bizarre experiment, here’s how to get the most out of it:
- Watch the original first (if you can): Finding a subbed version of Key of Keys is tough, but seeing how serious the original actors were makes the dub ten times funnier.
- Listen to the soundtrack: The Lovin' Spoonful’s contributions might be out of place, but the songs are actually great 60s folk-rock. "Fishin' Blues" is a standout.
- Spot the Bond connection: Keep an eye out for Akiko Wakabayashi. Knowing she goes from a parody of a Bond girl to a real Bond girl in just twelve months is a fun bit of trivia.
- Look for the legal "Easter Egg": It’s been reported that the voice at the very end of the movie—the one doing the final narration—isn't actually Woody Allen. It's editor S. Richard Krown. This was part of the messy post-production fallout where the studio was making changes behind Allen's back.
Ultimately, this movie is a lesson in creative "remixing." It’s about taking something that already exists and forcing it to be something else through sheer willpower and a lot of bad jokes. It’s messy, it’s controversial, and it’s undeniably a landmark of 20th-century comedy.
If you want to explore more about how 1960s cinema was "repackaged" for Western audiences, your next step should be looking into the history of American International Pictures (AIP). They were the kings of taking foreign "B" movies—from Italian sci-fi to Japanese monster flicks—and slicing them up into something entirely new. Understanding AIP’s business model explains exactly why a movie like this was allowed to happen in the first place.