What a surprise, and what fun! Although I remember seeing promotional shots of this movie back in the 70s, hearing no more about it, I eventually decided it must never have been made. But, here it is in all its craziness. The beginning is rather edgy as the delectable, Sydne Rome is almost gang raped before the action swings into slapstick and she escapes, albeit with ripped t-shirt. This is as fully dressed as she ever is in this ending up fully nude and leaving the madhouse as quickly as she entered it. An amazing cast clearly had great fun and Hugh Griffith is as animated as I've seen him as the lecherous old head of the household. Mastroianni is marvellous throughout (in and out of the tiger skin). But everybody enters into the spirit and if we never see Lollipop because she is always on her back being serviced by one of the ping pong players, we hear her shouting her encouraging, 'Give it!' in accompaniment to his, 'Take it!'. Polanski is suitably quirky in a particularly quirky role and if the whole thing appears like some LSD inspired wonderland, it has been lovingly made with some style and is a joy to watch.

A young American woman (Sydne Rome) traveling through Italy finds herself in a strange Mediterranean villa where nothing seems right.

The film opens with a rape attempt -- very odd for any comedy, even more odd coming from Polanski, given his reputation now. Of course, he also has rapes in his other films... hmm...

Does this film have excessive nudity? Sydne Rome spends a fair amount of this film topless, bottomless or both. And then she is attacked by a tiger from Africa. Yes, a tiger from Africa. (The scene immediately called Monty Python's "Meaning of Life" to mind.)

The dreaded Marlboro cigarettes show up that appear in so many of Polanski's films. If I ever meet him, that will be the first thing I ask. And then the film breaks the fourth wall... making the absurdity even more absurd.

When producer Robert Evans was trying to coax Roman Polanski to direct Chinatown (1974),he found Polanski thoroughly absorbed with this film, to the extent that he had bought a 50% share in it. Evans eventually lured Polanski by saying that whatever "What" made in its opening week, he would pay him as his salary for directing "Chinatown". Polanski readily agreed to this, expecting "What" to do well as he considered it the best thing he had done up to that point. Unluckily for Polanski, "What" only grossed $64 on its first week.

"What" is Polanski's absolute nadir .It's incredible that,helped by his excellent collaborator Gerard Brach ,he could produce nothing but this drivel:it's an insult to mention such names as Carroll (the elevator is the mirror ?) or Borges .The dialog is never funny,being mean,vulgar, pretentious,almost exclusively revolving around sex .Polanski himself appears as he did in "the fearless vampire killers" and later would in the highly superior "Chinatown" and "Le locataire" (the tenant).

At a pinch ,you might find something "polanskiesque" in this turkey:the conspiracy against a lonesome hero ,like in his masterful "Rosemary's baby' or "the tenant" ;the claustrophobia which is present in almost all Polanski's canon,not only the two mentioned works ,but also "repulsion" "cul de sac" "knife in the water" "death and the maiden" ,all these stories which happen "in camera".

The Carroll/Borges subject will be used again by Claude Chabrol in 1976 in his "Alice ou la dernière fugue" with much better results.

For Polanski's diehards.Barely.