The "Tiger"'s second adventure incorporates a few novelties – namely, color and an exotic setting – but it also downplayed the original's humor (mainly relegated here to the hero's omnipresent gadget-inventing partner – who also appears, albeit less prominently, in the first instalment). In any case, the film upped the ante on the villains' stake, as star Roger Hanin now has to contend with both a South American revolutionary regime and a band of neo-Nazis (named after the titular flower)!
As usual, willing girls come into play too and, in fact, The Tiger is made to be more of a ladies' man here: what seems to be an uncredited bit by Christa Lang (Fuller) once again at the very start, the would-be dictator's guerilla daughter (played by an Italian, Micaela Cendali) and, beguiling as ever, heroine Margaret Lee; the latter, who did several such films during this time – including one I just acquired i.e. O.S.S. 117: DOUBLE AGENT (1967) next to John Gavin – has her entrance actually delayed until the film is almost half over and, besides, she is made out to be a femme fatale, going by the surname of Mitchum no less, until exposed as a double agent {sic}!
The plot this time around concerns a sunken treasure (shades of the contemporaneous Bondian outing THUNDERBALL, peut-etre?), with which the baddies intend to finance the afore-mentioned insurrection and, by extension, help obtain world domination for the 'master race'. Chief among them is Chabrol regular Michel Bouquet (who, though allowing himself to be slapped around by Lee, is the one to finally blow her cover and, in one of the film's most effective sequences, even electrocutes Hanin!) and Assad Bahador (appropriately supercilious as The Orchid).
As with the first film, we get a number of wacky moments in the mix – not least the sight of sharks appended, as a warning sign, to several front doors of a fishing village (later on, one of these is X-rayed by director Chabrol himself, looking disheveled in an amusing and unbilled cameo) and, to keep the tiger connection alive, the two protagonists are caged and whipped as if they were circus animals (with Lee even decked-out in a skimpily fetching leopard-skin loincloth). The climax, in fact, takes place in Bouquet's zoo – where the ensuing shoot-out feels almost like a dry-run for the memorably subtle closing scene of one of Luis Bunuel's latter-day masterpieces i.e. THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY (1974)!
As usual, willing girls come into play too and, in fact, The Tiger is made to be more of a ladies' man here: what seems to be an uncredited bit by Christa Lang (Fuller) once again at the very start, the would-be dictator's guerilla daughter (played by an Italian, Micaela Cendali) and, beguiling as ever, heroine Margaret Lee; the latter, who did several such films during this time – including one I just acquired i.e. O.S.S. 117: DOUBLE AGENT (1967) next to John Gavin – has her entrance actually delayed until the film is almost half over and, besides, she is made out to be a femme fatale, going by the surname of Mitchum no less, until exposed as a double agent {sic}!
The plot this time around concerns a sunken treasure (shades of the contemporaneous Bondian outing THUNDERBALL, peut-etre?), with which the baddies intend to finance the afore-mentioned insurrection and, by extension, help obtain world domination for the 'master race'. Chief among them is Chabrol regular Michel Bouquet (who, though allowing himself to be slapped around by Lee, is the one to finally blow her cover and, in one of the film's most effective sequences, even electrocutes Hanin!) and Assad Bahador (appropriately supercilious as The Orchid).
As with the first film, we get a number of wacky moments in the mix – not least the sight of sharks appended, as a warning sign, to several front doors of a fishing village (later on, one of these is X-rayed by director Chabrol himself, looking disheveled in an amusing and unbilled cameo) and, to keep the tiger connection alive, the two protagonists are caged and whipped as if they were circus animals (with Lee even decked-out in a skimpily fetching leopard-skin loincloth). The climax, in fact, takes place in Bouquet's zoo – where the ensuing shoot-out feels almost like a dry-run for the memorably subtle closing scene of one of Luis Bunuel's latter-day masterpieces i.e. THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY (1974)!