Jap Jape

What's Up, Tiger Lily? Woody Allen, as televiewers know, is an anonymous little giggle merchant who looks like a slight defect in the wallpaper pattern and makes funnies that are so far out they sink before the slow boats get there. One day, for instance, he appeared in public leading his pet ant on a leash. On other occasions he wondered evilly if Memorial Day poppies contain opium, tsked sympathetically about a resolutely modern painter who cut off his ear with an electric razor, revealed regretfully that he once owned a silver mine but it tarnished.

Woody has now discovered a gold mine: the movie business. Last year he wrote a wacky feature (What's New Pussycat?) that plotzed so many people that it has already grossed more than $10 million. And in Tiger Lily, this baby-faced bagman has brought off the hat trick. He has made a movie without spending money--in fact, he has made a movie without even making a movie. For about $66,000, advanced by Producer Henry Saperstein, Allen bought up a ludicrously lousy Japanese thriller that was made in glorious TohoColor and should have been confiscated as contraBond. For a couple thou on top of that, he eliminated some Japtrap, erased the Japanese talk track and dubbed in some English dialogue that transforms the story into Allengory and the characters into kooky-yacky.

Like so. When the hero (a full-blooded Oriental introduced by Allen as Phil Moscowitz) slugs a thug, he calls him nasty names: "Spartan dog! Roman swine! Spanish fly!" When he meets the villain, an egg-salad addict named Shepherd Wong, he expresses his contempt for a man with "a chicken on his back," and informs him sternly that "two Wongs don't make a White." And the villain, when he dies, gasps hysterically: "Don't let me be embalmed. I want to be stuffed with crabmeat!"

The joke of course goes on too long (80 minutes), and when the spectator tires of it he can't help noticing what Allen's annotations cannot entirely conceal: the original film. It's terrible. Still and all, Allen & Co. stand to make about 1000% profit on their minuscule investment, and that ain't bean curd.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.