What's Up, Tiger Lily?

What's Up, Tiger Lily? is a 1966 American comedy film directed by Woody Allen in his feature-length directorial debut.

Allen took a Japanese spy film, International Secret Police: Key of Keys, and overdubbed it with completely original dialogue that had nothing to do with the plot of the original film. By putting in new scenes and rearranging the order of existing scenes, he completely changed the tone of the film from a James Bond clone into a comedy about the search for the world's best egg salad recipe.

During post-production, Allen's original one-hour television version was expanded without his permission to include additional scenes from International Secret Police: A Barrel of Gunpowder, the third film in the International Secret Police series, and musical numbers by the band The Lovin' Spoonful. This experience helped convince Allen that he should secure creative control for all his future projects. The band released a soundtrack album. Louise Lasser, who was married to Allen at the time, served as one of the voice actors for the "new" dialogue soundtrack, as did Mickey Rose, Allen's writing partner on Take the Money and Run (1969) and Bananas (1971). In 2003, Image released the film on DVD, with both the theatrical and television soundtracks. The DVD also offers the 11 minutes of television footage as a separate bonus.

Plot
The plot provides the setup for a string of sight gags, puns, jokes based on Asian stereotypes, and general farce. The central plot involves the misadventures of secret agent Phil Moskowitz, hired by the Grand Exalted High Majah of Raspur ("a nonexistent but real-sounding country") to find a secret egg salad recipe that was stolen from him.

The movie has an ending unrelated to the plot, in which China Lee, a Playboy Playmate and then-wife of Allen's comic idol Mort Sahl, who does not appear elsewhere in the film, does a striptease while Allen explains that he promised he would put her in the film somewhere.

Cast

 * Tatsuya Mihashi as Phil Moscowitz, a secret agent and self-described "lovable rogue" (other people call him "amiable zany")
 * Akiko Wakabayashi as Suki Yaki, a beautiful woman who seduces Phil and later works alongside him as a spy
 * Mie Hama as Teri Yaki, Suki's sister who helps Phil as well (cf. sukiyaki, teriyaki)
 * Tadao Nakamaru as Shepherd Wong, an evil gang leader who has stolen the recipe for the world's greatest egg salad
 * Susumu Kurobe as Wing Fat, an evil gangster who teams up with Phil to steal the recipe from Shepherd Wong, but intends to keep it for himself
 * Sachio Sakai as Hoodlum
 * Hideyo Amamoto as Cobra Man
 * Tetsu Nakamura as Foreign Minister
 * Osman Yusuf as Gambler
 * Kumi Mizuno as Phil's date
 * Woody Allen as Himself / Dub Voice / Projectionist
 * Julie Bennett as Dub Voice
 * Frank Buxton as Dub Voice
 * Louise Lasser as Dub Voice
 * Len Maxwell as Dub Voice
 * Mickey Rose as Dub Voice
 * The Lovin' Spoonful as Themselves

Soundtrack album
The soundtrack album to What's Up Tiger Lily? was released in 1966. It contains music by The Lovin' Spoonful. The audio engineer at National Recording Studios was Fred Weinberg, who went on to produce and engineer many other films and albums. It was re-released on CD along with You're a Big Boy Now, the Spoonful's soundtrack for the 1966 film by Francis Ford Coppola. It reached No. 126 on the Billboard Pop Albums charts.

Track listing

 * 1) "Introduction to Flick" (2:14)
 * 2) "Pow!" (2:26)
 * 3) "Gray Prison Blues" (2:04)
 * 4) "Pow Revisited" (2:26)
 * 5) "Unconscious Minuet" (2:05)
 * 6) "Fishin' Blues" (1:59)
 * 7) "Respoken" (1:48)
 * 8) "Cool Million" (2:02)
 * 9) "Speakin' of Spoken" (2:41)
 * 10) "Lookin' to Spy" (2:29)
 * 11) "Phil's Love Theme" (2:23)
 * 12) "End Title" (4:06)

Reception
The reviews were mixed upon the film's release. Expressing disappointment in the movie, The New York Times stated that "the peppery English sound track wears thin as the action churns around in absolute chaos." Variety wrote, "The production has one premise — deliberately mismatched dialog — which is sustained reasonably well through its brief running time."

Aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports 81% approval of the film from 26 reviews, with an average rating of 6.9/10.