The film opens with a scene of a wealthy young man (Chaplin) arriving at his house in a taxi in the morning after a night of heavy drinking.

He then takes out his handkerchief, blows his nose on it, and wipes the mucus onto the taxi door, in an attempt to free his hand.

), Charlie withdraws his hand, and headbutts the taxi door so hard he knocks himself back inside.

He then lights up his cigar and, accidentally, burns the taxi driver's hand with the lit end.

He almost punctures a wheel in his attempt to free the jacket, and the door, unexpectedly, opens with a jolt.

He finds his key was in his coat pocket all along, and decides to enter the "proper" way, that is, via the door.

Of course, the door is the worst possible option for a lean-on, and Charlie pays the price.

He retrieves himself, and walks surprisingly steadily for a few steps, until another mat approaches him, and his legs slide out from below him, causing him to fall on his back.

He lands between a tiger rug and a stuffed Eurasian lynx, which terrify him as he thinks they are real.

Charlie's willpower increases minute-by-minute, and his running gets faster as it does—and so does the table top.

He finally falls down out of sheer exhaustion, and, lo and behold, the table top stops spinning.

He then attempts to pour it directly onto the glass, and he found a way to mess that up as well—carelessly, he sloshed it everywhere around the floor and on his shoes.

He cannot light it, and dumps it in his hat, that is, thanks to his goose-chase, on the floor, thinking of it as a dustbin, and then burns his hand with the lit end.

He walks over to his hat and takes the cigar out, then dumps it on the large pool of beer he's got.

He takes out another cigarette from his cigar-pouch, slips on a carpet, unsuccessfully attempts to hang his hat against the peg, puts it on anyway, and then slips on another carpet, his head landing on the bottom of the stairs.

He proceeds to fail several times in climbing the stairs, and a large cuckoo clock on the upstairs landing also poses a problem, due to its pendulum's implausibly wide swing.

When he reaches the top, the rope gives in, and Charlie slides down helplessly.

However, the pendulum knocks into his jaw, and Charlie staggers back towards the stairs—back to where he started.

The pendulum smashes into his jaw again, but Charlie isn't knocked down the stairs, and enters like a four-legged animal into his room.

Soon, the hilarity ensues again, which ends with Charlie wrecking his bed and tearing his hat.

A reviewer for the Louisville Herald wrote, "Chaplin, by himself, creates all the action that is necessary to produce the laughs for which he has become noted, and there is no doubt that this is the most exacting role the comedian has ever essayed."

In 1932, Amedee Van Beuren of Van Beuren Studios, purchased Chaplin's Mutual comedies for $10,000 each, added music by Gene Rodemich and Winston Sharples and sound effects, and re-released them through RKO Radio Pictures.

Many Chaplin fans consider this version of ‘One A.M.’ to be a brilliant combination of music and sound effects with the action.