Mabel Munoz Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Yazmin Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

julian kennedy What’s up Tiger Lily: 7 out of 10: Long before Airplane or Mystery Science Theater 3000 or even my own mix-up of an uncut bootleg of Chōjin densetsu Urotsukidōji and Led Zeppelin II (Blows Pink Floyd and the Wizard of OZ out of the water.) there was What’s Up Tiger Lily.A very young Woody Allen acquired the rights of a Japanese James Bond knockoff called Kokusai himitsu keisatsu: Kagi no kagi (Literal English title International Secret Police: Key of Keys) and dubbed in his own dialogue.The film starts with some non-dubbed footage involving bondage, a shootout, and a circular saw. Then Woody appears with an interviewer what he has done with the film. The film then restarts Woody’s dubbing in place and with the exception of two short interruptions by Woody (both very funny) It is the Japanese import with a new script and story.The dub itself is quite funny and well done. One can definitely see the roots of some of Woody Allen’s comic themes in this work. The overall story of the world’s greatest egg salad recipe is quite well done and the voice work is applicable and fits the on screen characters well.What’s Up Tiger Lily benefits from good source material to work with. Longtime fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 know that even the best riffing can suffer from deadly boring source material. (Red Zone Cuba for example). What’s Up Tiger Lily’s source material is colorful, action packed, and has a very attractive cast. In fact I would love to see the original source material.On the down side, since the film is dubbed, when the movie has no dialogue the experience can drag. Unlike an Airplane or a Mystery Science Theater 3000 riffing session, What’s Up Tiger Lily isn’t a 10 jokes a minute affair. Even more detrimental the Lovin Spoonful show up periodically to present an unrelated music video. This both dates the effort horribly and kills the flow of the humor.What’s Up Tiger Lily is a must see for fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and of Woody Allen’s early comedy. (And fans of the Lovin Spoonful I guess).One should pay respect to ones elders and it is a very fun time.

Tender-Flesh On Woody Allen's first outing as director, instead of making a real film, he spliced two Japanese films and had voice actors re-dub the dialogue so it tells a much different storyline from the source material. However, during the intro where Woody is interviewed, he makes it clear that what happens with the action and what happens with the spoken plot are supposed to be two completely different things, they end up being very similar. Most of what happens mirrors, although more comically(supposedly), what seems to happen in the action.This isn't even an original idea(it had been done before with silent films). Only a few parts are actually funny and even those aren't that great. I've seen some other Allen films and they were superior in every way to this nonsensical garbage. The jokes are painful. I think a bunch of frat boys could have come up with funnier dialogue that was completely opposite of what was happening in the action.In fact, I'd rather watch the actual two Japanese spy films with their original dialogue(even if it wasn't dubbed and was in subtitles) than re-watch What's Up, Tiger Lily.The two best aspects of this "film" are the 80 minute runtime and the striptease by the very "healthy" China Lee at the end of the film. If you are a Woody Allen fan, then I suppose you "must" see this, however, if you are not, totally avoid this film. Watch Mystery Science Theater instead, if you must see something that's similar.

headly66 My friends and I have traded lines from this movie since I first saw it in high school in the 80's. Spartan Dog! Spanish Fly! I still laugh my ass off at this movie today. People may say it's dated but if you love Woody and get all the jokes (which I think most kids today won't) it is hilarious and will always be a classic. Woody is probably kicking himself he let this out of his ownership hands as many people are commenting on edited or re dubbed versions shown on TV. When I heard the great line again in the beginning when Phil Moscowitz looks at the girl when he opens her towel & gives his third Presidential answer as Lincoln (referring to his beard) I couldn't help but laugh had this been written today & he could have answered Bush! Just plain silly stuff that I still cry at including the shower peeking scene, "MOM!?" and "Where am I going to get a long thin coffin?!!" This movie is diffidently meant as background to a group hangout with friends accompanied by some intoxicants.

Merwyn Grote Back during the Colorization Wars of the 1980s, Woody Allen was uncharacteristically public about defending the history and artistry of his craft against those who were eager to take old black & white classics and turn them into digitized coloring books. Chief among the foes of the cinematic art were Ted Turner, who had used his power as a media mogul to buy up control of a huge backlog of films by MGM, RKO, Warner Bros. and other studios as fodder for his cable TV channels. Whether as philistine or shrewd capitalist, Turner hoped to prolong the money-making life of old movies by making them look vaguely newer through color. Of this, Woody said, "To change someone's work without any regard to his wishes shows a total contempt for film, for the director and for the public." To which Ted replied "WHAT'S UP, TIGER LILY?" It was not a question.And unfortunately, Ted had a point.Once upon a time, WHAT'S UP, TIGER LILY? was a 1965 Japanese spy movie called KOKUSAI HIMITSU KEISATSU: KAGI NO KAGI (a.k.a., INTERNATIONAL SECRET POLICE: KEY OF KEYS). The low rent U.S. studio, American International Pictures, bought the rights to the film and, apparently realizing they had a hibachi-cooked turkey on its hands, they decided to try to salvage the project by turning it into a comedy. Fresh from his experience as writer and actor in WHAT'S NEW, PUSSYCAT, Woody was offered the opportunity to try directing -- well, re-directing -- by re-writing, re-editing and re-dubbing KEY OF KEYS into TIGER LILY? And the film's James Bond-style story about missing microfilm became a wise-cracking farce about the search for the perfect egg salad recipe.It may never be known if KEY OF KEYS was/is a good film, but it is apparent that for all of his efforts, Woody couldn't save it for American audiences. Rearranging the scenes and putting smart alec remarks and inane non sequiturs into the unsuspecting mouths of the actors must have been fun and maybe even an educational experience for the neophyte filmmaker. The result it like a 3-D MAD Magazine satire or a trial run for the type of comedy that would make its breakthrough with AIRPLANE! and THE NAKED GUN. But in the end, TIGER LILY isn't all that funny, or at least not consistently funny. For every good chuckle there are a dozen lead balloons and too much of the dialogue is used to explain the convoluted plot. If appearances are anything, the reconstruction of the film was a rush job and it all was done on the cheap.So the interesting thing about TIGER LILY is not its value as art or entertainment, but the ethics behind it. You can't blame Woody for taking on the project; it must have been a challenge and it was certainly an opportunity to move his career into a new direction. But, as the Ted Turner situation would make apparent, TIGER LILY is not the film that the makers of KEY OF KEYS had envisioned. That is not to say that in its original Japanese form, the film was a CITIZEN KANE or a MALTESE FALCON or even a MANHATTAN, but whatever it was, Allen greatly altered the way it would be experienced by most of the world. Of course, Woody never claimed that his version of the film was meant to replace or even compete with the original, but just the same he negated another director's work.If anything TIGER LILY is a lesson in both the plastic and the fragile nature of film as an art. Whether with mischief or malice, a little imagination can alter not just the tone of a film but its message and its vision. And as the BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN parodies that made their way to Youtube.com proved, you don't even have to be a professional to become a re-director.A further irony: AIP found Woody's cut of the film too short for theatrical release and they again reedited it to add some more footage and a few faux music videos by The Loving Spoonful. You can even tell in the final cameo that he makes at the end of the film that Woody's own voice has been redubbed by someone else. This angered Allen, who felt his work had been violated, and it motivated his drive to become a director who protects his work from unwanted tampering. But one wonders if Senkichi Taniguchi, the director of KEY OF KEYS ever saw WHAT'S UP, TIGER LILY? --and whether or not he ever forgave Woody for what he did to it.