It seems Woody Allen was obsessed by 007 even before Casino Royale. To work through his Bondage, Allen took a Japanese thriller, tampered a bit with the editing, stuck in The Lovin' Spoonful, redubbed the dialogue, and came up with the story of Phil Moskowitz, a Japanese Jew who is kidnapped by Asian beauties and then gets involved in a plot to steal the best egg-salad recipe in the world. Allen saw nothing original about this witty appropriation: "It was actually done in Gone With the Wind," he notes during the film's prologue; "that was a Japanese movie with Southern voices dubbed in." The self-reflexive one-liners come faster than an Uzi on full auto-analysis. When Moskowitz meets the bad guy, Shepherd Wong, someone whose hunger for power is equalled only by his hunger for egg-salad, he declares his contempt by saying, "Two Wongs don't make a white." There are sideways shoot-outs, the wedding of a snake and a chicken, and unforgettable gags like a towel-clad gal who gives Moskowitz the ultimate come-on: "Name three presidents." But the funniest joke is how Woody Allen turns the espionage genre topsy-turvy, using a Japanese movie that was already an unconscious satire. Or as Allen would say: "It was a mockery of a sham of a mockery..." - Steve Seid