The Movie Forums Top 100 Comedies Countdown

One vote. After Hours was my #22. Scorsese's always had a knack for comedy despite having done very few films that could genuinely qualify as straightforward examples of the same, but his most direct exercise in making one is easily one of his top 10 films as far as I'm concerned so I had to throw it a nod. I've seen Arsenic and Old Lace twice - the first time I thought it was pretty funny, but the second time I cooled on it hard so I'm just whatever on it at this point.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

After Hours was #20 on my list. Glad to see it made up so high on the list. I knew Holden would have it on his list, but wasn't sure how many others liked it well enough.

For those of us that live in the Northeast and have taken a cab from time to time, we have all had a driver like the one in After Hours. Some big galoot with his window down, leaning on the door frame, somehow managing to hit every pothole in the road, and won't respond no matter what you say, save to ask for the fare...

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Seen After Hours, meant to see Arsenic and Old Lace some time in the past year when it was on the Criterion Channel before it left, but other things took priority.


After Hours was a late, so close to making it, cut. It and two other movies were competing for my #14 spot for my, "general, very good, dark comedies that didn't get specifically named otherwise," and it was basically a toss up. Ultimately I went for one of the other two for flimsy reasons.
Now that it looks like the one I did choose probably won't make it, I guess maybe I chose poorly.


I think there's a legitimate question of why didn't I bump something lower for After Hours then? I don't have a good answer beyond, I didn't want to make everything a dark comedy.


I think almost my entire ballot could almost summarized as:
Dark
Acidic
Satire
Horror (generally the most light hearted ones)

I've never seen After Hours. I guess I should?

Arsenic and Old Lace is another all-time favorite. When I was a kid there were two VHS tapes that we could reliably count on to be available to take out of the library down the street, and this was one of them (the other will show up later in the countdown). So I probably watched it at least 10 or 20 times back then, and many times since. Here's my 10/10 review from two years ago (which also reveals the other movie to come...). Arsenic and Old Lace was my #4.

I watched "After Hours" about a year ago. It was recommended to me in a mofo HoF. Found it funny, but not overly memorable.

Don't think I've seen " Arsenic and Old Lace".

Two movies I haven't seen since I keep putting them off.

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I'm a little surprised by that, and will venture forth an answer to your possibly rhetorical question with a, "yes, probably."

It will go on the list of "movies I haven't seen, probably should see, and may someday get around to" that I keep in my head. Not the safest place, if I'm honest.

Midnight Run is on a similar list for me and that sounds about right.

ETA: though Midnight Run is on sale on iTunes right now for $5, so it's going into the library, and at least has that going for it.

somehow, after hours is the first film to appear from my list (#11). haven’t seen it in ages but i adored it when i watched it and would probably rank it as my 4th favorite scorsese.

love cary grant and capra but haven’t seen arsenic and old lace yet

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I watched After Hours for the same hall of fame in 2013 as The Apartment, and gave it the same rating. I don’t remember much outside of the opening credits Haven’t seen the other

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I've seen both After Hours and Arsenic and Old Lace several times each. I'm not a big fan of either, though I can appreciate them. I rated both the same.

After Hours: Is great, but like any movie that runs on a kind of manic energy, I find it loses steam in the last twenty minutes. I think I only have about an hour and twenty minutes where I can tolerate an avalanche of unfortunate coincidences and piss poor luck. It's unfortunate, because I think Catherine O Hara is one of the more interesting characters he runs into in the film, and yet by the time she shows up in the last third I'm already beginning to check out. That first hour and change though is pretty spectacular stuff though.


Arsenic and Old Lace is something I know I really like, but I can't remember much as its been years. In short though, any comedy which has Cary Grant in it is going to get the best of Cary Grant. Such a rare combination of overwhelming charm and perfect comedic timing. A legend, and rightfully so.

In After Hours, Griffin Dunne gives his most full-blooded performance - his bloodiest and my fave is An American Werewolf in London. He spends the craziest night anyone could, some of it due to his own stubbornness and the rest due to an apparent series of jokes by God or the Devil or just-plain-crazy humans. Very funny for those on the wavelength.

Arsenic and Old Lace is a Capra film with almost none of his themes apparent, but that's reasonable since it's basically a straight adaptation of the play, albeit by the Epstein Brothers, who co-wrote Casablanca. This film has a strange production history. Capra shot it in late 1941 and enlisted while filming it. He got an extension to enter the Armed Forces until after he finished editing it. Meanwhile, Warner Bros. made a deal that it would not release the film until after the play completed its run on Broadway, which it did in June 1944, so the film was released in September of that year. As far as the film itself goes, Boris Karloff wanted to be in it, but the Broadway producers wouldn't release him, so Raymond Massey plays his part in what may be his greatest (straight-faced) comedic performance ever. The plot, about two little old ladies (Josephine Hull and Jean Adair) who poison lonely men and have their wacko nephew (John Alexander), who thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt, bury them in the "Panama Canal" down in the cellar, is pretty well-known and full of twists and turns and plenty of dark humor. My two fave performances though are probably Peter Lorre as plastic surgeon Dr. Einstein and Jack Carson as the new cop on the beat who just happens to have written a murder mystery play he wants to show the famous theatre critic Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant).

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The film came out first, but a few years later, the same team released a TV show under the same premise and set in the same universe, but with different characters. Both are great.

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Two donuts for me. Haven't seen either.


Seen: 55/74

I loved Arsenic and Old Lace when I was younger but didn't care for it when I watched it recently.

I was indifferent to After Hours when it came out but now I'm a fan.

Surprised I haven't seen Wolf of Wall Street mentioned, especially given how recent it is.

I've never heard of it, but there seems to be a lot of love for it here, I may have to check it out too.

Wolf of Wall Street was one of my last cuts. I think that was probably a mistake

Same