The Tiger Makes Out is a 1967 American Black Comedy film directed by Arthur Hiller and starring Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson.
Ben Harris (Wallach) is an alienated Greenwich Village mailman who decides there's no better way to get a girl than by kidnapping her. Targeting an attractive young woman, a mishap ends up causing him to capture a middle-aged housewife, Gloria Fiske (Jackson) instead. With no alternative, he makes do with the person he has caught, but she proves to be not quite what he envisaged.
Dustin Hoffman makes a brief appearance in his film debut.
This film features examples of:
- Anti-Hero: Ben, who sees himself as an intellectual in a world of sheep, and decides to abduct a woman as a social statement, to "disrupt the indifferent".
- Alone in a Crowd: Ben, seeing himself as an intellectual in a world of sheep, walks the streets of New York angrily talking to himself while people stream around him at double speed (done by speeding up footage of him walking at half-speed.)
- Conspicuous Trenchcoat: Ben picks up a trenchcoat and fedora at a pawn shop as part of his plan. As the owner anxiously watches him suiting up, he points out that he has a sawed-off shotgun for sale.
- Locked in a Freezer: When Ben attempts to abduct a woman, he stalks one potential target, a restaurant worker, into a walk-in freezer, but ends up getting trapped inside as she leaves, unaware of him.
- Unsettling Gender-Reveal: After Ben decides on his plan to abduct a beautiful woman, he's mesmerized by a sultry cabaret singer, who he follows to the dressing room, never noticing the lobby sign advertising a female impersonator performance.
