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From: leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper)
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: Re: AFTER HOURS film review
Message-ID: <1318@mtgzz.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 25-Oct-85 12:58:18 EDT
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Posted: Fri Oct 25 12:58:18 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 26-Oct-85 05:19:09 EDT
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>> 
>>                          AFTER HOURS
>>                A film review by Mark R. Leeper
>
>>        .......                People will see AFTER HOURS as an often
>> nightmarish but hilarious black comedy but it may not register that it is
>> also very effective as a horror film.
>
>A horror film?  Come on, give me a break!  I feel that you are guilty
>of giving the wrong impression to people who may want to see the movie.
>I found nothing horrible in the story.  

I don't know what your definition of horror is.  If you restrict it to
vampires and madmen with knives, no, it is not that sort of a horror
film  (except for a few moments toward the end in which it really does
indulge in a concept that really was taken from an old horror film, I
won't say what (to avoid a spoiler), but there was a film of the 50's
that was pretty much about the same idea).  But for most of the film
there were no traditional horror elements.  Instead there was a man
embroiled in a nightmarish situation.  One that seems simple on the
face of it and one easy to get out of, he just wants to go home.  But
every effort is frustrated in some way or another.  I am reminded of a
Richard Matheson story of a man who ate popcorn at a movie and then is
frustrated in every attempt to get a drink of water.  As the story goes
on he becomes more and more frantic.  It was a very effective horror
story, yet not really all that different from AFTER HOURS.  I would say
it was even more effective as horror because in HORROR OF DRACULA it
was possible to say, this is a far away place and vampires don't exist.
SoHo is not that far away and the sort of people in the film really may
exist there.  The fantasy element comes in the unlikely chain of
coincidence, not unlike CUJO, and in neither film am I really sure it
is all that unlikely.  I don't expect most people who see AFTER HOURS
will see it as a horror film, but in fact it fits any objective
criteria I can give it.  I am not trying to sell it as a horror film, I
am asking people who see it or who have seen it to consider that it
might actually be a horror film without them realizing it.

>Rather, I found it to be the most sophisticated comedy around
>nowadays.  

Where people have disagreed with me before is that they thought I was
overrating the film.  At least we agree that it was good as a comedy.

>Did you call it a horror  film because you needed an angle for
>the review?  (mini flame: I hate  serious, deep movie 
>reviews....  no offense to you personally sir).  

I think a movie review should give the reader something to think about.
Maybe ask the viewer to see the film in a different light in addition
to (not instead of) the one the viewer would have gotten on his own.  I
don't like reviews I consider pretentious, but pretentious is in the
eye of the beholder.  If you don't think the film bears the
interpretation of being horror as well as comedy, fine.

>In      
>any event I would rate the movie +4 on our Official Olympic Movie
>Rating Scale, and urge people to go see it.  But not as a horror film,
>as a comedy.

Is that -4 to +4 or 0 to 10?  You seem to like it too much for the
latter, but I am not sure.

>
>ps: Perhaps this should have been in net.flame.....  -- 

I'm glad it wasn't.  I don't read net.flame.

				Mark Leeper
				...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper