Narrative voiceover was the preferred cinematic style of the New York "ruffles". Why? Because most of these pictures were shot in two days or less, that's why.

And you had to ask.

After The Ball Was Over, quite unlike the hint of romantic nostalgia that the song of the same title summons up, is about drugs, neuroses and death. Upbeat subjects to be sure.

Story-wise, Evelyn Lowell's father dies and leaves her a bundle. Hey, but money can't necessarily buy you love. We also learn that Evelyn's a neurotic-dysfunctional-claustrophobic. Her husband Robert (a dead-on Woody Allen lookalike) starts running the company and Evelyn's affairs with the idea that he's going to get rid of her and cash in her chips.

Robert mounts a devious, Charles Boyer campaign (Gaslight) to drive Evelyn off the deep end. She's slipped one Mickey after another along her unerring road to ruin. After a night of unbridled lust with a couple of swingers, the fun begins for Evelyn. She's forced into sex and other "unnatural acts" (as she relates it), and some blackmail polaroids are taken of her. She relates all of these human indignities to a shrink, but, as we soon learn, the shrink is an actor hired by Evelyn's husband in this elaborate scenario. In addition, Robert maintains a network of spies, stoolies, and other finks working in consort to discredit his wife.

A fairly interesting film on any level, After The Ball Was Over also offers up a very strange, Rosemary's Baby-type sequence in its mixed bag of tricks. True to the wages-of-sin theme prevalent in just about all of these pictures, Evelyn turns the tables on Robert, switches drinks, knocks him out and smothers him. Not necessarily in that order.

Stars Alice Noland, Neal Taylor, Norris Nelson, John Daniels, Celia Adams, Leslie Coates.