Peeping Tom

The 'British Psycho' is shooting way over, but it has it's moments and a fun angle.

Strangely good idea by but sometimes goofy realization

For a 1960 crown endeavor, it’s pretty good.

“Peeping Tom” is a landmark in voyeuristic cinema, offering a haunting look at a killer's psychology, all wrapped in striking, dramatic lighting that deepens its disquieting allure.

First class suspence thriller I remember it well . Time for a rewatch

One of the best cinematic horror of the 60's it is the British version of Psycho and Peeping Tom is a masterpiece of slasher and the cinematography looks unique beautiful shot and quite disturbing and uncomfortable for viewers and Michael Powell did really fantastic director but sadly the critics gone to far for not allowing Powell to make more films.

One of a greatest movie in the history of cinema.

It's truly incredible to look back and consider which films were vilified upon release. One thing they invariably have in common is that they look incredibly tame by today's standards, even laughably so, and that's exactly where Peeping Tom comes in. Released just a few months earlier than Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, which would redefine the horror genre and help created the slasher subgenre, its critical mauling effectively destroyed director Michael Powell's career, something you can do nowadays with a single ill-advised tweet. And it's such a shame, because Peeping Tom isn't just a pale imitation of Psycho, it's a fantastic horror film in its own right. Much like the Hitchcock classic, it's a psychological study of a disturbed young man with a bizarre relationship with his family, and it heavily utilises the theme of voyeurism to both tell its story and put the audience into the mind of the lead. To see the crimes through the mind of a killer is to be complicit in them, and it might have been this realisation that so disgusted audiences in 1960, or maybe it was because the decade hadn't got swinging yet and everyone was still so uptight. It's far less bloody than most horror films released every year, focusing more on the mentality of the killer rather than the kills themselves. The music doesn't work as well as Bernard Hermann's legendary score from Psycho, but in many ways the film is just as good, if not very close. A compelling lead, disturbing themes, kills that are more frightening than bloody and a tension and creepiness that pervades every scene make Peeping Tom a truly underrated classic, and a film that deserves the reputation it's earned in later years, and never warranted such a violent backlash in the first place.

Irredeemably awful and, for what is supposed to be a legendary cinematic groundbreaker, is more boring than sitting in the dentist's waiting room and as entertaining as cleaning the cat litter box. Powell: yes, the legend who brought us "The Thief of Baghdad" and "The Red Shoes" (which, as a former ballet dancer and later a balletmaster, remains a personal favourite). But … a decade or two later and the trademarks have not matured: retina-burning oversaturated colours, over-staged blocking (he's what'cha call an auteur, ain't he?), and mindboggling, dreadful acting down the line (OK – I liked the brief dance/murder sequence with Moira Shearer, but the choreography looked like something Mary Tyler Moore did on "The Dick Van Dyke Show" in the same era). Karlheinz Böhm (whose main attribute is that he is a son of Karl Böhm, one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century and a Nazi collaborator; he did his post-war time and went on to conduct until he could barely lift the baton) seems to be aping Peter Lorre and has all the charisma of a public lavatory floor. And he is just one among a sea of zombies. I am extremely disappointed: I was led on for decades about what a masterpiece it was, and now that I finally catch up with it (thank you, Criterion; can I please get my money back?), I am hugely disappointed on every possible level. To suggest this was "groundbreaking" and "ahead of its time" is pure heresy. Kindly have a look at what a true auteur was doing around 1960: watch some Goddard (up to 1967) and Truffaut and anybody from the nouvelle vague, some Visconti and Bertolucci, some Fellini, some Kurosawa and Teshigahara, some Buñuel, some Kubrick, some … OK. You get the idea.

There's much to admire, technically at least, if not in other aspects too, in Michael Powell's film, which many consider as the first slasher film. The location shots are like visual records of 1960s London while Powell's fluid camerawork is dramatic, informative and creative. Leo Marks' chilling screenplay about Carl Boehm's Mark Lewis, a shy, camera-obsessed young man who murders prostitutes and actresses in order to capture on film their last moments of fear, is also ahead of its time if only in its inclusion of the killer's backstory to make him more human and sympathetic. However, at the same time ironically, it's hard not to find this all a bit dated as well, especially with the modern audience's considerably desensitized palate, both regarding nudity and violence to women. Boehm's acting is on the uneven side, sometimes very convincing but too arch and laboured at other times (though that unintentionally funny and amateurish final scene is entirely Powell's fault); while the jury is still out, at least for me, whether Moira Shearer's dance of death is an ingenious bit of suspense building or just there to remind us she was in The Red Shoes before. However, the casting of real-life nude model/entrepreneur Pamela Green as one of Mark's models and Powell and his son playing Mark's abusive father and young Mark respectively are fascinating decisions that film academics and psychoanalysts will have a field day with. While I'm glad I've seen this, and it is an accomplished film in its own right, I can also understand why, as Hitchcockian as this film is, why the similarly themed Psycho, also released in the same year, did better business and is better remembered in comparison to this steely and creepy arthouse counterpart.