I was living in Los Angeles in the golden '80s, the last great age of American films I think. I watched the video of 'After Hours' so many times it wore out and am happy it is now available on DVD. But I hesitate to buy said DVD. Why? This film is extremely disturbing, and not really a comedy but a gruesome and pitch black snapshot of NYC culture that cuts very close to the bone for those of us who knew the nightlife of Sunset Boulevard on the other side of the country. The similarities between NYC and LA at that time were legion, the only difference being the cavernous, sinister streets of NY were not lined with palm trees. David Lynch's 'Mulholland Drive' best captures that aspect of danger and tragedy on the west coast that Scorsese has captured on the eastern seaboard.
Griffin Dunne has to be the most under-rated American comedian and it is a very good thing his gifts were captured so beautifully in 'After Hours'. His character seems to be the only sane person in Manhattan. He is mostly surrounded a bevy of beautiful and hopelessly neurotic and ruthless women.
Rosanna Arquette, a strange actress all on her own, is cast in a very weird part in this film. Nothing she does makes sense which makes her behavior entirely plausible within the circumstances of her environment. Kafka, the author Dunne's character is reading, sets the tone for this dark and dangerous story. Arquette is perfect as the doomed suicide, a sort of modern grand guignol character. She is also tremendously annoying and it's a relief when her whining person is dispatched in the creepy loft she inhabits with Linda Fiorentino.
There is a fine performance from Linda Fiorentino (whatever happened to her?), as an s/m style dominatrix/artist in SoHo who leads Paul (Dunne) a merry dance through the darkest bowels of the nightclub scene during the "punk" hey-day. Terri Garr, a seemingly sweet and "normal" city girl, a blonde, all-American girl living in a sickeningly sweet and Dada-esquire little apartment. She is the most horrifying of all the women Paul encounters. She struck me as being a potential murderess should Paul have decided to linger longer with her. It was a great relief when he escaped her burgeoning hysteria and ran back into the streets. Verna Bloom's motherly artist caps off Paul's horrible journey by encasing him in plaster of Paris and leaving him in a basement flat fit for Frankenstein's monster.
John Heard is entirely weird and menacing as a soft-spoken but highly-strung bartender, another mass-murderer waiting to blossom looms in the background of his personality.
Scorsese has zeroed in on the familiar things in our lives in a most alarming manner. Cheap bathrooms in cheaply renovated lofts and cramped little apartments. The god- awfulness of the lives of these people is deeply disturbing, and now that I am19 years older than when I first watched this film so avidly, I am not so sure I want to dive back into that vortex of neurasthenia and darkness again.
But I probably will. One of Scorsese's best and definitely his most under-rated film.
Watch at your own risk.
Griffin Dunne has to be the most under-rated American comedian and it is a very good thing his gifts were captured so beautifully in 'After Hours'. His character seems to be the only sane person in Manhattan. He is mostly surrounded a bevy of beautiful and hopelessly neurotic and ruthless women.
Rosanna Arquette, a strange actress all on her own, is cast in a very weird part in this film. Nothing she does makes sense which makes her behavior entirely plausible within the circumstances of her environment. Kafka, the author Dunne's character is reading, sets the tone for this dark and dangerous story. Arquette is perfect as the doomed suicide, a sort of modern grand guignol character. She is also tremendously annoying and it's a relief when her whining person is dispatched in the creepy loft she inhabits with Linda Fiorentino.
There is a fine performance from Linda Fiorentino (whatever happened to her?), as an s/m style dominatrix/artist in SoHo who leads Paul (Dunne) a merry dance through the darkest bowels of the nightclub scene during the "punk" hey-day. Terri Garr, a seemingly sweet and "normal" city girl, a blonde, all-American girl living in a sickeningly sweet and Dada-esquire little apartment. She is the most horrifying of all the women Paul encounters. She struck me as being a potential murderess should Paul have decided to linger longer with her. It was a great relief when he escaped her burgeoning hysteria and ran back into the streets. Verna Bloom's motherly artist caps off Paul's horrible journey by encasing him in plaster of Paris and leaving him in a basement flat fit for Frankenstein's monster.
John Heard is entirely weird and menacing as a soft-spoken but highly-strung bartender, another mass-murderer waiting to blossom looms in the background of his personality.
Scorsese has zeroed in on the familiar things in our lives in a most alarming manner. Cheap bathrooms in cheaply renovated lofts and cramped little apartments. The god- awfulness of the lives of these people is deeply disturbing, and now that I am19 years older than when I first watched this film so avidly, I am not so sure I want to dive back into that vortex of neurasthenia and darkness again.
But I probably will. One of Scorsese's best and definitely his most under-rated film.
Watch at your own risk.