Martin Scorsese has never directed a horror film per se, but his terrific 1985 black comedy After Hours comes pretty close. The horrors here are not monsters, ghosts or homicidal maniacs, however, although the film does feature a crazed mob that makes the villagers in Frankenstein look like a church choir. As in his best films, Scorsese is more interested in the theme of disconnect – the horror inherent in man’s inability to communicate to those around him. Like the classic Twilight Zone episode in which the English language becomes suddenly and inexplicably incoherent to the hero, After Hours presents a leading man who is unable to make himself understood, leading to a sometimes funny, sometimes surreal, and sometimes terrifying Kafkaesque journey through the streets of Soho.
Griffin Dunne play Paul Hackett, an anonymous data processor who makes the egregious mistake of going to a diner one night and meeting Marci (Rosanna Arquette), a loopy free spirit who invites him to her Soho loft to view the work of her artist friend Kiki Bridges (Linda Fiorentino). Clearly more interested in viewing a nude Marci that Kiki’s Plaster-of-Paris Bagel and Cream Cheese Paperweights, Paul accepts.
From the beginning, the night does not go well. Paul’s money flies out of the taxi cab window on a tumultuous ride to Soho (leaving the cab driver hilariously speechless); Marci isn’t even at the loft when he arrives (Kiki comments enigmatically that she’s at an all-night drug store) and when she does arrive things go from bad to worse as she recounts a nightmarish rape story (it turns out that it was her boyfriend and she “slept through most of it”), and then tells Paul that she is married and that her husband cries out "Surrender Dorothy" at the moment of sexual ecstasy. The final straw is when Paul discerns that Marci might be hiding disfiguring burn scars, which causes him to make a hasty exit, leaving her in tears.
Things continue to spiral downward for Paul: He can’t get home because subway fares have increased to $1.50 (he has $.90); a friendly bartender offers to give him the fare but can’t open the cash register; Paul unwittingly becomes a suspect in a rash of burglaries occurring that very night in the neighborhood; and Paul returns to Kiki’s apartment only to find that Marci has committed suicide. The remainder of the film finds Paul unable to communicate his situation to a variety of off-the-wall Soho residents, including a cocktail waitress stuck permanently in 1968 (Teri Garr); an ice cream vendor (Catherine O’Hare) who ultimately leads a vigilante mob against him; and the two actual burglars (Cheech and Chong) who ironically deliver him from the hands of the mob to the golden gates of redemption – his workplace – the next morning.
My good friend Delmore Walker pointed out that most Scorsese heroes are fringe individuals who have trouble communicating, from Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver to Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy to Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ. The difference in After Hours – and why it verges more closely to the horror genre – is that Paul Hackett is your basic Everyman, a normal guy with a normal job who finds himself in extremely abnormal situations. From the opening scene in which he tunes out a co-worker to the final shot in which he stares blankly at a computer that has just bid him “good morning,” Paul is wholly unable to connect or communicate with any other character in the film. Just a few examples:
· When his $20 bill flies out of the taxicab window, Paul is unable to make himself heard to the driver until they arrive in Soho.
· While waiting for Marci to return from the all-night drugstore, Paul tells Kiki about a childhood incident in a hospital burn ward. As he finishes his story, he realizes Kiki has fallen asleep.
· Paul cannot admit that he fears Marci’s (possible) burn scars. Instead, he feigns anger and storms out of the loft.
· Paul cannot convince the tollbooth attendant to let him have a $1.50 token for $.90.
· Paul eloquently explains to Marci why he ran out of the apartment – only to discover that she’s dead.
· The ice cream vendor repeatedly stymies Paul’s attempts to use her telephone to call for help.
· Paul is unable to communicate to the vigilante mob that he is not a burglar.
· Paul is unable to communicate to police that an angry mob wants to kill him – in fact, the police actually hang up on him.
· Paul is unable to communicate to burglars Neil and Pepe that he is sorry for causing them to drop Kiki’s statue and TV, which they had purchased legally from her.
· At the end of the film, Paul is completely silenced when he is disguised as Plaster-of-Paris statue by June (Verna Bloom), who then refuses to let him out even after the mob has left her apartment.
Interestingly, the one scene in which Paul is able to let loose and fully explain his nightmarish experience (to a bi-curious man who couldn’t care less), he is standing in front of a brick wall with three spotlights on him, making it appear that he is giving a monologue in a comedy club or on an HBO special. This ties Paul visually to another disconnected Scorsese hero: Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy, whose only form of communication -- indeed only form of understanding -- was via the media.
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