Search - What's Up, Tiger Lily? on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Violence, Questionable for Children, Adult Language Movie Release: 1966 DVD Release: 07/15/2003 Format: DVD - Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV Audio Tracks: English SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 20 mins Studio: Image Entertainment Members Wishing: 38 Genres: Comedy, Parody/Spoof, Absurd Comedy, Spy Comedy See Also: What's Up, Tiger Lily?

Woody Allen took a Japanese spy movie called Kagi No Kagi, and replaced its original dialogue with an entirely new plot. In its revised state, this film follows the adventures of agent Phil Moskowitz who is on a deadly mission to secure the recipe for the "world's greatest egg salad." However, Moskowitz, with the help of the beautiful Suki and Terri Yaki, must prevent this unique recipe from falling into the hands of the evil Shepherd Wong. The group Lovin' Spoonful recorded the majority of the songs for this film. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide

Woody Allen - Narrator/Host/Voices
Tatsuya Mihashi - Phil Moskowitz
Mie Hama - Terri Yaki
Akiko Wakabayashi - Suki Yaki
Tadao Nakamaru - Shepherd Wong

Any DVD menu that starts up with The Lovin' Spoonful's "Pow!" running in an audio loop automatically gets bonus points. That little humorous detail characterizes the spirit behind this entire release of What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966), which marked Woody Allen's debut as a "director" of feature films. He was, in effect, the author of what we're seeing on the screen here, even if he didn't shoot the original movie material with which he was working. Allen took a violent Japanese rip-off of the James Bond movies and dubbed in an English language dialogue using his own voice and a cast of actors. In addition to carrying an absurd story line, the film occasionally functioned as a veiled comedic commentary on what we're seeing onscreen; in the most obvious moment, a dancer's bare breasts are covered by superimposed red dots, which are labeled "Foreign Version" with an arrow running from the label to the dots. The result was something that anticipated Mystery Science Theater 3000 by some two decades. It's also excruciatingly funny on its own terms, as Japanese superagent Phil Moskowitz takes on criminal mastermind Shepard Wong for possession of a special egg salad formula, ably supported by The Lovin' Spoonful (who are actually seen in the movie). What makes this disc a real treat is that it has been mastered in a letterboxed format, with the 2.35:1 aspect ratio completely capturing the original movie's anamorphic image. This was probably one of the last movies that one thought necessary to be seen in widescreen, but it does add to the fun. That goes double for The Lovin' Spoonful's scenes -- they're spread across the entire screen for their performance clip of "Fishin' Blues." The owners of the movie have given it a splendid transfer, capturing the flesh tones and other details about on the same level as the current crop of James Bond movie DVDs, and they've provided some handy bonus features, as well. The most important is a choice between the original theatrical audio track -- which is a little more over-the-top in its ribald humor and sheer outrageousness -- and the track intended for television broadcast (according to the standards of 1966); thus, a gag about a vibrator turns into a line about a rented car, and the other tones down the jokes. There's also a comparison function that allows one to select from shots in which the dialogue between the two tracks is different and then play them back-to-back. It would have been nice if the makers of the American DVD had seen fit to emulate one interesting feature of the Region 2 DVD available in England, which contains a series of images and some history concerning the participants in the original Japanese film, two of whom ended up in the Bond movie You Only Live Twice (1967). In comparing the two discs in other respects, however, the American version from Image Entertainment has deeper, richer color and a sharper picture. It comes with 19 chapters, which also labels The Lovin' Spoonful performance clips. The main menu leads to a multi-layered selection of bonus features that is fairly easy to maneuver. The latter includes a convenient Woody Allen filmography that runs from 2003 backward to his mid-'50s television credits; it's reasonably thorough, although could have been spread across a few more frames. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide