What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966) on Netflix
PG19661h 20mAdventureComedyCrime
The Grand Exalted High Macha of Rashpur hires secret agent Phil Moskowitz to recover a stolen egg salad recipe. Gangster Shepherd Wong has the recipe, and rival gangster Wing Fat seeks it.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb5.8/1010,385 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes81%
Trailer
Plot summary
A Japanese spy film's footage was given entirely new dialogue that has nothing to do with the original plot, so it plays as a comedy about a secret egg salad recipe. The Grand Exalted High Macha of Rashpur hires secret agent Phil Moskowitz to recover a recipe stolen from him. The recipe is held by gangster Shepherd Wong, and rival gangster Wing Fat seeks it too.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Allen took footage from the Japanese spy film International Secret Police: Key of Keys (1965) and overdubbed completely original dialogue with nothing to do with its plot, adding and reordering scenes to make one hour out of 93 minutes and turn a James Bond clone into a comedy about the world's best egg salad recipe.
- Once dubbed and edited, the film was too short for most movie houses to agree to play it, so original footage of Allen was shot in New York to pad the running time. The set was too noisy to record voices, and as Allen was unavailable for the dubbing session, the film's editor, S. Richard Krown, provided his voice.
- During post-production, Allen's original one-hour television version was expanded without his permission, adding scenes from International Secret Police: A Barrel of Gunpowder, the third film in the series, and musical numbers by the band the Lovin' Spoonful.
- Producer Henry G. Saperstein had acquired the localization rights to a number of Toho films in a package deal, including International Secret Police: Key of Keys. Rather than localize it in the traditional manner, he came up with the idea of completely re-writing the story and dubbing it as a comic mystery.
SPOILER
The film ends with a credits scene unrelated to the plot, in which China Lee, a Playboy Playmate and the wife of Allen's comic idol Mort Sahl, who appears nowhere else in the film, does a striptease while Allen, also on screen, explains that he promised he would put her in the film somewhere.
