Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson had one of the most enduring actor marriages in Hollywood, a union that lasted some 56 years and only ended with Wallach’s death in 2014. Jackson died two years later.

The talented master craftsman and craftswoman often worked together on and off Broadway, most famously in the 1964 romantic comedy “Luv,” written by Murray Schisgal. Their chemistry on stage and blunt give-and-take about how to get their performances in sync off-stage were legendary.

They appeared on screen and TV together less frequently. And watching the Schisgal-scripted atrocity “The Tiger Makes Out,” it’s no wonder.

While there are exceptions, every time I watch a Hollywood comedy from the late ’60s I get a vivid sense about how the business was floundering, flopping about trying to figure out what audiences liked or wanted from the big screen alternative to TV sitcoms and romances.

“Tiger” has credits that create reasonable expectations. It had Jackson and Wallach, playwright and screenwriter Schisgal, who had a hand in “Tootsie” as well as the film of his play, “Luv” and it was directed by Arthur Hiller a few years before “Love Story,” “The Out of Towners” and the genuine classics “Silver Streak” and “The In-Laws.”

“The Tiger Makes Out” has the feature film debut of Dustin Hoffman, a single scene lovers’ quarrel that crackles with reality and comic promise.

But man, is this clunker hard to watch. The acting is broad and forced, the jokes unfunny well on their way to cringe-worthy. I’m loathe to name every “vintage” film a “classic,” as in cases like this, it’s old but terrible. Still, “vintage” film doesn’t SEO scan well, so here we are.

Wallach plays Ben Harris, a 40something loner, a cranky, dyspeptic, preachy, smarter-than-everyone else (in his mind) postman a Incel in the making. By and large his neighbors and others he meets treat him better than he treats them.

But when you’re having landlady issues, neigbhor issues, housing authority complaints and no one is willing to listen to them (David Doyle plays the city housing functionary), you kind of understand it, and Ben.

He rages at “all the indignities I’ve suffered” at the hands of “illiterate” “idiots.”

“Intellect is not a byproduct, but an INSTINCT” he shouts to anyone who will listen.

Some day, and some day soon, Ben Harris will have his REVENGE upon this culture, these “Imbeciles. Sheep! Baa, baa, baa, baa, baa, baa, baa sheep!” Is he about to coin the phrase “going postal?”

Jackson is Gloria Fiske, a suburban housewife hellbent on finishing her abandoned-college education and getting “my baccalaureate degree.” Her office-job-in-the-city husband (Bob Dishy) does nothing but whine about this and earn reproaches about his “lower middle class” attitudes towards being married to a woman of culture, taste and education.

Ben has a bad day dealing with bureacrats and other NYC “types.” Gloria can’t get past the elusive and cowardly registrar (1960s game show mainstay Charles Nelson Reilly) to pursue her education.

The pawn shop that provides Ben with a trench coach and hat he figures he needs for his nefarious plan sizes him up and offers to sell him a shotgun, which will fit under it just so.

Nice. Gun dealers, then and now, am I right?

Gloria’s paranoid “He’s LOOKING at us” divorced friend is hardly an endorsement of the “freedom” of being single again.

What happens when the nut acts out by kidnapping the unhappy, frustrated housewife? A whole lot of talking, not much of it remotely amusing.

Ben threatens rape, makes Gloria drop her skirt, stuffs her in a trunk and makes cracks about “fa—t” tight pants, letting Gloria and the viewer see Ben’s intellectual insecurity, which she bucks up as there’s barely a thought of escaping this nut. Considering her husband’s spouse abuse jokes from that morning, perhaps we don’t blame her.

Almost everything about this comedy grates today and reeks of Hollywood desperation — faux pop-rock theme song, strident jazz score, that “young people” scene with Hoffman and Marieclare Costello.

They were trying to figure out “What Americans” and especially young Americans wanted in a screen comedy. Their best idea, often as not, was to simply adapt a Broadway show.

And as I mentioned in my recent review of the not-quite-as-bad “Enter Laughing,” that rarely worked because there was only one Neil Simon. Not everybody could make New York as funny (for its day) as him.

“The Tiger Makes Out” must have been badly received upon release, and its ugly sexual attitudes and clunky stage production theatrics aren’t letting it age well either.

At least Anne and Eli were smart enough to shrug it off and move on, even if their broad characters and arch, verbose exchanges were bad enough that “Tiger Makes Out” can be rightly regarded as their worst collaboration ever.

Rating: “approved,” threats of sexual assault, a gay slur

Cast: Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson, Bob Dishy, Charles Nelson Reilly, David Doyle and Dustin Hoffman.

Credits: Directed by Arthur Hiller, scripted by Murray Schisgal, adapted from his play. A Columbia release on Tubi, Youtube, Amazon, etc.

Running time: 1:34