Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31484 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-08-17
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Colour, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 97 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
This well-regarded cult film is a tense Kafka-esque tale concerning what happens to a likeable computer guy who is in the wrong place at the wrong time in the city that never sleeps--New York. This is a New York infested with bizarre characters vividly brought to life by a once-in-a-lifetime cast. Griffin Dunne's wonderfully controlled comic performance as Paul Hackett is the glue that holds this increasingly surreal film together. Scorsese utilises a full array of independent and underground film techniques, including special film speed manipulations, angles and edits, deftly capturing the strange rhythms of an After-Hours New York City. Many will find the jokes clever and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. Some, however, will find the film an excruciating series of staged circumstances setting up a sadistically cruel dark nightmare of horrors. And there are a few lines of dialogue so poorly written they remind you how unbelievable the thin story really is. But forgive the film these few lapses--overall it's a wild, surreal ride. The most offbeat character is the beehive-sporting, Monkee-obsessed neurotic played to perfection by Teri Garr. And the moment when Griffin Dunne uses his last quarter to play Peggy Lee's "Is That All There Is" and dances with Verna Bloom while an angry mob searches SoHo for him is an inspired bit of lunacy. --Christopher J. Jarmick

Customer Reviews

A good case for being home during the wee hours
How often are you on the streets of the Big City after midnight? Have you ever wondered if maybe sleeping at night, a habit followed by "normal" people, acts as a barrier to encountering marginally functional night owls?

In the 1985 film AFTER HOURS, Griffin Dunne, an actor vaguely reminiscent of Dudley Moore, plays Paul Hackett, an anonymous computer nerd working in New York City at some mind-numbing post in a high-rise cubicle. He lives, eats, and sleeps isolated in a sterile apartment, without even a goldfish for company. Paul needs to get out more and find a fun loving girl.

Late one evening, while reading alone at a local café, Hackett is approached by Marcy, captivatingly played by Roseanna Arquette, who comments on his reading tastes. One thing leads to another with wild abandon, and soon she gives him her phone number thinking he may wish to buy one of her roommate's craftsy creations - a paperweight disguised as a plaster of paris bagel-with-cream cheese. Later, Paul calls. Amazingly, Marcy invites him to her place in SoHo, even though it's soon to be past midnight.

Arriving at the loft Marcy shares with her roommate, the nonchalantly sexy Kiki, Hackett is told by the latter that Marcy has stepped out for a moment to the local pharmacy. Paul asks, "Is she alright?" Kiki's answer, the disconcerting nature of which should give our hero an intimation as to what awaits him AFTER HOURS, is: "It's under control". And to whom is Kiki alluding when she casually mentions people she's known whose bodies are disfigured by horrible scars? Marcy is unblemished ... isn't she?

By the end of the film, when Paul staggers exhausted into his workplace the next day covered in plaster dust, the diversion has been watching Hackett ricochet from one situation to the next, and one denizen of the night to the next, each of which exhibits a certain disconnection with reality that Paul's coping skills can almost, but not quite, navigate. Indeed, on at least a couple of occasions, Hackett has the opportunity to become intimate with an attractive (albeit slightly askew) woman, only to have the opportunity snatched away by bizarre circumstance. Is it all a cosmic joke? Why, for instance, does the edgy blond waitress, played so appropriately by Teri Garr, surround her bed with mousetraps? (Squeak!)

AFTER HOURS is not a great film by any standard, but it is darkly humorous and off-beat enough to be thoroughly enjoyable, and to remind the viewer why it was Mom and Dad cautioned one to be home by the witching hour.

BEWARE OF STRANGE WOMEN IN LATE NIGHT CAFES...
The most important thing I can say to you about After Hours is - BUY THIS NOW! Probably Martin Scorceses' most underrated film and arguably his best. Weird, unnerving, tense (especially when the hero looks like the Mr Whippy lynch mob have finally cornered him. Sorry, you'll have to see the film), but most of all funny. Imagine all the weirdest nights out you've ever had, try to remember some of the strange people you've met over the years and then think for a moment what it would be like to have all that weirdness and strangeness come together on just ONE NIGHT. Well, that's what After Hours is about, the weirdest and strangest night you could ever have. Fantastic film! 10/10

The essence of black humour
This is by far my favourite film. If I'd written the script for it, I'd die happy.

I love the symmetry of its structure. It starts as Paul leaves his tedious job at the end of the day and ends as he fetches up at the office again the morning. We are therefore given two glimpses of Paul's ordinary daily life, but in between the film plunges us into a weird dreamlike hinterland. This involves curious funny/sad encounters that make no sense on a rational level but are perfectly in keeping with the dream world - that might be a reflection of Paul's own subconscious desires as much as the reality of night-time New York - the film so stunningly creates.

It's also perfectly balanced on the divide between humour and the genuinely disturbing. It is a wildly funny film, with almost every scene based on some completely absurd premise. For instance, Paul unties Kiki, thinking that he is rescuing her, only to find that he's just interrupted a bondage session with her Teutonic lover, Horst ('That was rude, Paul. You really should be ashamed of yourself'). But this humour comes out of disturbed and alienated lives, and we're never allowed to forget that. The scene where Marcy tells Paul about her husband's Wizard of Oz fixation ('He just couldn't stop. He just couldn't stop. He just couldn't stop') is hilarious, but there's something about the manic intensity with which she tells the story that is quite unsettling - and this uncomfortable mix of humour and the genuinely disturbing is pursued mercilessly throughout the film.

Ultimately, it's a very Kafkaesque movie (one of the scenes even uses dialogue from a Kafka novel) - it creates a labyrinth in which Paul is thwarted at every turn by people whose motivations are never entirely clear and by situations that remain inscrutable.

Some have criticised After Hours on the basis that the sequence of encounters Paul is subjected to are not realistic - too contrived and coincidental. I think this is missing the point - it's a bit like saying that most court cases are not conducted in the way that the case against Josef K in Kafka's 'The Trial' is conducted. The point is that these encounters are not realistic within the context of ordinary life, but they are in keeping with the very defined frame of reference of the film & they are designed (i.e. exaggerated) in order to bring us face to face with the illogicality of the world and the illogicality of our subconscious desires. The hinterland Paul wanders through is as much a dreamscape as reality & the logic of the encounters he's involved in is largely dream-logic.