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1[[quoteright:305:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/after_hours_1985.jpeg]]
2[[caption-width-right:305:''[[{{Tagline}} What if that date you thought would never end, didn't? When it's after midnight in New York City,\
3you don't have to look for love, laughter and\
4trouble. They'll all find you!]]'']]
5
6A 1985 American BlackComedy film directed by Creator/MartinScorsese. To date it's Scorsese's only "pure" comedy and a very dark one too.
7
8The film takes place in [[BigApplesauce New York City]] over the course of a single night. Unhappy office drone Paul Hackett (Creator/GriffinDunne) meets a beautiful girl in a cafe and ends up calling over at her place in [=SoHo=]. After things work out badly and he ends up leaving hurriedly, the remainder of the movie chronicles his attempts to get home and the often surreal obstacles he faces.
9
10The film's cast also includes Creator/RosannaArquette, Creator/LindaFiorentino, Creator/TeriGarr, Creator/CatherineOHara, Verna Bloom, Creator/JohnHeard, Creator/DickMiller, and Creator/CheechAndChong.
11
12It was the second of three somewhat [[DuelingWorks similar movies]] in which a milquetoast guy meets a very worldly girl, with things then taking a turn for the dark, preceded by ''Film/IntoTheNight'' earlier in 1985, then followed by ''Film/SomethingWild'' in 1986.
13
14Not to be confused with the Website/{{Cracked}} WebOriginal series [[WebVideo/AfterHours of the same name]], the {{Seinen}} [[{{YuriGenre}} yuri]] romance manga [[Manga/AfterHours of the same name]], the fan video series ''Marvel/DC: After Hours'', or the ''[[Series/TheTwilightZone1959 Twilight Zone]]'' episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S1E34TheAfterHours The After Hours]]".
15
16----
17!!This movie contains examples of:
18
19* AbhorrentAdmirer: Julie to Paul, who wants nothing to do with her flirting or advances and leaves her apartment with an obviously empty promise to call her later. [[spoiler: Paul's brushoff comes back to bite him when a scorned Julie starts putting up fake wanted posters of him]].
20* ActorAllusion: Julie, played by Teri Garr, dancing to "Last Train to Clarksville" and enthusing over Music/TheMonkees. One of Garr's early film appearances was in the Monkee movie ''{{Film/Head}}''. The clip of Julie [[AscendedMeme was part of the opening video montage played during the 2013 Monkees reunion concert tour]].
21* AmbiguousSituation: Marcy claims to have been raped by a boyfriend, but it's unclear if she's referring to an ex-boyfriend, her husband, [[spoiler:or her current boyfriend, Tom]]. It's made even more ambiguous by the latter appearing to be a NiceGuy.
22* AndIMustScream: Paul's brief entrapment in a statue. As originally written, he was going to end up that way.
23* BadHumorTruck: Mild example with Gail's Mister Softee truck: it is the only vehicle amongst the angry horde that is hounding Paul, and is driven by one of its craziest members.
24* BathroomStallGraffiti: At the pub's bathroom, Paul sees a graffito with a shark biting a man's best part off.
25* TheBigRottenApple: An absurdist take on it.
26* BlackComedy: A man is set up to be killed by a pissed-off lynch mob by a crazy woman and nobody he meets being willing to help him and even going out of their way to make his night-time escapade just ''that'' much more of a living hell. It's an exercise in laughing or cringing.
27* BookEnds: Paul ends up [[spoiler:right back in his desk the very next morning]].
28* {{Bouncer}}: He only lets people with Mohawks into Club Berlin.
29* BrainsAndBondage: Kiki is a [=SoHo=] artist, and Paul mistakenly believes she's been tied up against her will.
30* BrickJoke:
31** Paul goes into a diner to use a restroom, but the owner tells him it's for customers only, so he orders a burger and coffee and then ducks out. He later unwittingly ends up in the same diner where the bartender from earlier requests he get a glass of water. The owner silently brings the water, along with the burger and coffee.
32** En route to [=SoHo=], Paul's only dollar bill (a twenty) ends up flying out of the cab, forcing him to ditch and leaving behind an angry driver. He later manages to get some money and finds the same driver again, who is all too happy to take the money and leave him stranded to his fate.
33* ButtMonkey: The entire movie is centered around Paul having an absolutely horrible night.
34* CaughtInTheBadPartOfTown: The plot is Paul Hackett's odyssey to survive one night in New York's [=SoHo=] district while the world decides to make him an incredibly dark example of the ButtMonkey (as in, "he may end up lynched by an angry mob that mistook him for a thief" kind of ButtMonkey). At one point he even begs the universe to tell him what he did wrong and when he witnesses a murder near the end, he's so far into GivingUpOnLogic that he can only snark that the lynching mob will blame ''him'' for it somehow.
35* ChasedByAngryNatives: Paul, during the latter part of the film.
36* ChekhovsGun: The flyer for Club Berlin.
37* ChekhovsSkill: Julie's portrait-sketching abilities and her second job at a Xerox place. [[spoiler:After Paul rejects her advances, she uses these to print fake wanted posters falsely identifying him as the neighborhood robber.]]
38* ClosedCircle: Paul does not have the money to pay for transportation away from the [=SoHo=] neighborhood that the events of the movie happen in, nor is he able to contact anybody who can help him (the one person who loans him a phone makes him forget his friend's number in a {{Troll}} act). And by the end of the movie, Paul can't even try to walk away because the risk of him being found by the lynch mob is too high.
39* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: As you'd expect from [=SoHo=] in TheEighties, all the women Paul encounters are this, but especially Julie, who lives in some kind of [[TheSixties '60s]] time warp.
40* CoolestClubEver: Club Berlin, although it's just another hellish obstacle to Paul.
41* CosmicPlaything: Paul ends up on his knees, begging the universe for an answer as to why he keeps being tormented. Once he sees a murder through a window in the middle of running away from an angry mob, [[GivingUpOnLogic he's so tired of his torment]] that he just snarks that someone will blame him for ''that''.
42* CreatorCameo: Martin Scorsese as the spotlight operator at Club Berlin.
43* CringeComedy: When Paul isn't being a CosmicPlaything, he's either embarrassing himself or interacting with someone who is behaving ''[[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} bizarrely]]'', much to his befuddlement.
44* DisproportionateRetribution: Yes, it was rude of Paul to swat away the paperweight Julie presented him with (even if he had a reason to), but then what did she do about it? Spread a series of flyers pointing out Paul as the infamous [=SoHo=] burglar so he'll be hunted down by an irate, ''murderous'' mob.
45* DropDeadGorgeous: [[spoiler:Marcy's naked corpse is fully revealed when Paul checks to see if she really did have the burn scars he thought he saw. She doesn't.]]
46* ExtremelyShortTimespan: It begins at night and ends in the morning.
47* FellAsleepStandingUp: Kiki falls asleep sitting wile Paul is giving her a massage.
48* FunnyBackgroundEvent: A shelf overflowing with cans of Aqua Net hairspray can be seen in Julie's apartment, which she probably uses to set her distinctive BeehiveHairdo.
49* GagHaircut: The punks try to shave Paul's head. It is Mohawk Night, after all. He escapes with a small bald patch on his scalp.
50* GainaxEnding: The movie as it is has a somewhat odd ending ([[spoiler:with Paul just happening to fall out of a van while encased in a sculpture, right outside his place of work]]). Reportedly, another idea for an ending had Paul [[spoiler:climbing into a woman's womb, and being "reborn" by the side of a highway]].
51* GenreMashup: A prime example of the “yuppie nightmare cycle” sub-genre; which combines ScrewballComedy elements with FilmNoir thriller ones.
52* GoodIsNotNice: You'd be forgiven for thinking that when [[HellBentForLeather Horst]] shows up, he's going to straight up murder Paul, but he really just wants Paul to remember to mind his manners.
53* ItsALongStory: When Tom asks Paul why it took him so long to get Tom's keys, Paul responds, "Long, difficult story."
54* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Paul may be a sleazy, self-absorbed yuppie, but he genuinely tries to keep his promises, apologizes whenever he realizes he's done something wrong, and is horrified when he finds [[spoiler:Marcy's corpse]].
55* JustTakeThePoster: Paul rips off the {{Wanted Poster}}s of him in the streets.
56* KafkaKomedy: One of the most frequently cited examples. The bouncer's dialogue is even taken from [[Film/TheTrial "Before the Law"]].
57* MagicalRealism: Club Berlin, [[spoiler:Marcy's disappearing and reappearing burn scars,]] amongst others.
58* ManicPixieDreamGirl: Marcy is exactly the plucky type Paul seems to need to get himself out of his boring rut. However, this trope is very darkly subverted — [[spoiler:she has a husband as well as a boyfriend, and ends up killing herself after Paul walks out on her]]. Gail is also a dark subversion, in that she starts very chipper, but torments Paul (denying him the ability to contact someone who can help him) [[spoiler:and later leads a lynch mob after him, partly because she thinks he's a thief and partly (apparently) out of murderous spite]]. Julie seems to fancy herself as one, but Paul [[AbhorrentAdmirer isn't interested]].
59* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: Any time Paul actually tries to [[PetTheDog do the right thing]], it backfires horribly. Tries to return a sculpture? Finds out that it wasn't actually stolen [[spoiler:and that Marcy just killed herself]]. Goes back to Julie like he promised? She gets pissed at him for leaving [[spoiler:and frames him for the burglaries]]. Tries to repay his cab fare? The cab driver takes off without him. The list goes on.
60* NoFameNoWealthNoService: The bouncer seems to be doing this to Paul, as there is no line outside the nightclub. However, it turns out it's because he lacks a Mohawk, yet another one of the ways he is viewed as an outsider.
61* OneCrazyNight: All Paul wants to do is go home, but a series of increasingly bizarre things keep happening to him.
62* OnlySaneMan: Poor Paul.
63* TheOperatorsMustBeCrazy: When Paul calls 911 to report being chased by a VigilanteMilitia, the operator hangs up on him thinking he is being pranked.
64* QuietCryForHelp: Played with. Julie leaves a note for Paul at the pib reading "Help! I hate this job".
65* RandomEventsPlot: Paul stumbles from one bizarre situation to the next.
66* RapeAsBackstory: [[PlayingWith Played with]] to the point of BlackComedy with Marcy. She tells Paul that a man tied her to the bed in the room where they're sitting and had his way with her "for six hours." Paul sympathizes, seemingly thinking this could explain her odd behavior, only for Marcy to nonchalantly admit she slept through most of it.
67* ReallyGetsAround: Kiki.
68* RearWindowWitness: While hiding from an AngryMob in a BlindAlley, Paul observes a domestic murder in a window across the street.
69* SmiteMeOMightySmiter: At one point late into the night, Paul breaks down in the street and asks God what he wants from him.
70* TitleDrop: Pete the diner owner mentions that "different rules apply" when it gets to be "after hours".
71%%* TrueArtIsIncomprehensible: Kiki makes plaster-of-Paris sculptures resembling bagels and cream cheese. Also, the freakish screaming papier-mache sculptures.[[invoked]]
72* UnusuallyUninterestingSight: By the end of the film, Paul finds ''witnessing a murder'' just interesting enough to snark that he will probably be blamed for it somehow, what with the way the universe is acting keen on making his life hell. And in the very last shot he turns into one of these himself, by sitting in his office covered head to toe in the plaster dust that he didn't bother to clean up because he's ''that'' fed up, with the few office workers that are in the same room just carrying on like nothing is happening (although it's hard to tell if it's just because it's so early that it's nearly deserted and someone will ask later).
73* WeirdnessMagnet: Paul. He meets all of the crazies that come out at night in New York… and manages to piss off every single one of them in some way, shape, or form.
74* WhamLine: Marcy [[spoiler: committing suicide via overdose on pills]] is shocking enough; however, this line one-ups that moment:
75---> '''Bartender''': "[[spoiler: My girlfriend just killed herself a little while ago. Took some sleeping pills]]."
76* WhamShot:
77** Halfway through the movie, when Paul returns to Marcy's apartment, he discovers she [[spoiler:killed herself by overdosing on pills]].
78** When Paul reluctantly spends time with Julie, she sketches a portrait of his face. Two-thirds into the movie, [[spoiler:she has created many of them as fake “wanted” posters to wrongfully incriminate Paul out of spite]]. It proves to be quite effective as it also, eventually, results in [[spoiler:the formation of a lynch mob]].
79* WorldGoneMad: There doesn't seem to be a completely damage-free person alive or awake late at night.
80* WrongNameOutburst: Marcy tells Paul about her husband who is a huge fan of ''Film/TheWizardOfOz'' and always screams "Surrender Dorothy!" during orgasm.

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