It’s a dirty job, but…

WHAT’S UP, TIGER LILY?, fondly remembered silliness from 1966, marked 30-year-old gag writer and standup comic Woody Allen’s debut as feature director. Well, sort of; what he did with this was redirecting, which consisted of rewriting, re-editing and re-dubbing a 1965 Japanese-made action comedy (4th in a series of five Bond spoofs: they beat Flint & Helm to the punch) called International Secret Police: Key Of Keys, directed by Senkichi Taniguchi, its rights having been purchased by American International Pictures for $66,000. *

“It is written – ‘He who makes the best egg salad shall rule over heaven and earth.’ Don’t ask me why egg salad – I’ve got enough aggravation.”

Allen appears in an introduction, once or twice during the proceedings and at the conclusion. The Japanese cast includes Tatsuya Mihashi, Akiko Wakabayashi, Mie Hama, Susumo Kurobe, Hideyo Amamoto, Tetsu Nakamura and Shoji Oki. Added on at finish is Playboy centerfold China Lee. *

Looking at the footage, it’s obvious the original was not meant to be taken seriously, and discarding a good deal of it for the re-tool left just an hour that Allen and associates used to play with. To goose the running time to 80 minutes (and presumably draw teenagers), the studio added song interludes and background scoring from The Lovin’ Spoonful. Some of the gags fall flat, but many get laughs: I thought it was a riot when I was fifteen—and it still draws chuckles more than a half-century (gawd…) later.

Akiko (which in Japanese means “to die for”. Anyway, it should.

Allen was aided in the script by Louise Lasser, Frank Buxton, Len Maxwell, Mickey Rose, Julie Bennett and Bryna Wilson. They pitched in to provide the dubbed voices. Enough curiosity seekers showed up to bring in $1,000,000 at the box office, which means that back in ’66 more people went to see this than either Cul-De-Sac or The Battle Of Algiers. Culture was secure.

* Woody, from the later lofty perch of fame: “That was an odd little abhorrent project. Some guy called me and said he bought a Japanese film and would I dub it with comic American? I don’t count that as anything. I was even going to sue to keep that from coming out because I thought it was such junk. It was successful so my manager at the time said, ‘Shut up and go with the flow and don’t make a fuss.'”

Hey, weren’t you…?—-the alert will recall Takashi Shimura (hero ‘Phil Moscowitz’) as later getting revenge by pasting Pearl Harbor in Tora! Tora! Tora! and lovelies Akiko Wakabayashi (‘Suki Yaki’) and Mie Hama (‘Teri Yaki’) from tempting another, more successful spy, in You Only Live Twice. Not only that, the ladies featured in King Kong vs. Godzilla and Ghidrah, The Three-Headed Monster. Bad guy Sosumo Kurobe (‘Wing Fat’) was better known to kids as ‘Ultraman’. And China Lee, disrobing during the end credits, was not only a Playboy Playmate of the Month (August ’64, diligent research shows), and their first Asian-American in that, uh, ‘august position’ but shortly after married comedian Mort Sahl. Mort was a wise guy.