What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (1966)

In 1993, a silly Australian movie came out called Hercules Returns. It was one of the stupidest ideas I’d ever seen in my life, and absolutely the most hilarious and, I thought at the time, innovative.

The flimsy premise of the film is that young film buff Brad McBain (David Argue) has renovated an old cinema with the help of his friends. He has the great idea for opening night of running the last movie shown before the cinema had closed. It was Samson and the Mighty Challenge, made in 1964. The film they receive (just minutes before opening night) is in the original Italian and has no subtitles or dubbing.

Oh noes! What are they going to do?!?

Well obviously Brad, Lisa (Mary Coustas) and Sprocket (Bruce Spence) will provide the voices themselves, won’t they?

Hilarity ensues. Here’s a bit for your viewing pleasure. Trust me, it’s funny.

So what does this have to do with What’s Up, Tiger Lily?

After seeing Midnight in Paris and Blue Jasmine, I decided I needed to spend some time exploring Woody Allen’s ouvre. I loved those two movies – well, I loved the former and admired the latter – so thought I should have a look at how the man who made Sleeper and Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex got to Blue Jasmine, with movies like  Purple Rose of Cairo and Zelig along the way.

Google told me What’s Up, Tiger Lily? was his first full-length writer/director credit, and eBay provided it at the bargain price of $5.50.

Colour me surprised when I found that Woody had done a ‘dub parody’ nearly 30 years before Hercules Returns. I’d thought they’d been so original.

About 10 minutes into Tiger Lily, I realised that David Argue and co. may not have been original, but they were so much funnier in their execution.

What’s Up Tiger Lily is a dub parody of Japanes action film ‘International Secret Police: Key of Keys’. I have no idea what the original plot is, but under Woody’s hand it becomes a super-spy’s search for the ultimate secret egg salad recipe.

At thn end of this clip here is one of the strangest things about the movie: The Lovin’ Spoonful. They kept popping on screen, playing at a fake dance party, that had absolutely nothing to do with the action. It was quite bizarre. But then the lovely Google pointed out that when Allen agreed to take on the project he knew the ‘joke’ would wear thin so wanted to use only an hour of the movie, but the executives wanted a full-length commercial feature. Unbeknownst to Allen, they inserted these songs to pad it out.

So Tiger Lily is no Hercules Returns, and certainly no Blue Jasmine, but it does introduce the slightly off-beat creative mind of Woody Allen.