After Hours

Inspired by Kafka’s The Trial, this flamboyant, funny, but often disturbing black comedy stars Griffin Dunne (also one of the producers) as a mild word-processor operator who gets involved with various weirdos in New York’s SoHo, witnesses a murder and a suicide, and gets chased by a vigilante mob who think he’s the neighborhood apartment-crasher — all in one night. Immaculately shot (by Michael Ballhaus) and vibrantly acted, the movie has a nightmarish quality, a sense of events spinning crazily out of control. All the hero wants is to get laid, and his libido leads him into a netherworld of chaos, social embarrassment, and violence lurking underneath every encounter. A bit cold at times, but endlessly enjoyable; director Martin Scorsese, who took this project after his first attempt to make The Last Temptation of Christ imploded, seems to be having a ball. With an inspired assortment of nuts: Rosanna Arquette, Verna Bloom, Linda Fiorentino, Teri Garr, John Heard, Catherine O’Hara, the great Dick Miller, Bronson Pinchot, and Cheech and Chong (in their last official movie together; they broke up the same year).