Wayne K
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.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/20/24
Full Review
Lorenz L
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.
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
11/30/23
Full Review
Alan W
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.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
11/07/23
Full Review
Leaburn O
Last of the BFI top 100 British films I had to see. I watched it in style in the Prince Charles cinema. Pretty oddball serial killer film. Not really scary, odd moments of lightheartedness. Does a job to entertain but not much more.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
10/27/23
Full Review
Patrick C
It came out the same year as Psycho, got overshadowed by Psycho, and I like it a bit more than Psycho. That being said I don't love Psycho as much as most people.
I was bored for a while and thought parts were kinda silly and feel very dated. By the end though I had grown quite attached to our main couple, even the murdery one. The characters in this movie are so 3 dimensional and sympathetic.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
10/26/23
Full Review
Matthew B
Sometimes a movie is made at the wrong time and in the wrong place. In the case of Peeping Tom, the movie was made at the right time but in the wrong place.
In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock directed Psycho, a movie about a voyeuristic serial killer who targeted sexually attractive women due to his inability to let go of deep-seated psychological problems that he had with a parent. The result was an enormously successful movie that greatly enhanced Hitchcock's reputation and helped to open the door for a new decade of cinema where sex and violence became more explicit.
Meanwhile in the same year, Michael Powell made Peeping Tom in Britain, a movie that dealt with the same subjects. But what a difference in response! Guests at the premiere to Peeping Tom shunned Powell. The film received such harsh reviews that it was pulled from the cinema in less than a week. Powell's career in England was ruined, and he was never allowed to make another movie in Britain again. He made a few films in Australia, but none of them acquired the same fame or respect as his earlier ones.
Nowadays Peeping Tom is regarded as one of Powell's greatest films, and an early example of a slasher movie. This last description is misleading, as Powell's film had little influence on later cinema due to its limited availability for many years.
We may well wonder what all the fuss is about. The sex and violence depicted in Peeping Tom seems mild now. In spite of victims being speared in the throat by a blade, we see no blood at all. There is some full frontal nudity for the first time in a mainstream British movie, but very little of that.
So what made Peeping Tom so offensive? One factor is where Powell made the movie. British culture had that curious mixture of sexual inhibition and perversity that Powell portrays in the film, and this repressed attitude meant that Powell's comparatively graphic portrayal of sex and violence was anathema to many. By contrast, there was a comparatively relaxed attitude in America where Hitchcock was working.
The opening scene of this movie sets the tone for what is to come. In a film about scoptophilia (or scopophilia, i.e. voyeurism), the first image that we see is an eye. We are watching someone as he watches a woman. The observer is our ‘hero', Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm). He is wearing a long overcoat that makes you think of a flasher, and in a way that is what he is.
However his overcoat is not designed to reveal, but to conceal. The flashing that he has in mind is the kind that he makes from the camera that he carries with him everywhere, his ‘third arm' as one character calls it. The only exposure that he is interested in is the kind that decides the light and dark of a camera, and he is not interested in revealing himself physically, but in revealing the darker side of others.
The audience are not to be let off the hook in Powell's film. Our voyeuristic love of violence and sex on film is similar to that of Mark, but not taken to the extreme that Mark takes it. Most of us do not take a prurient pleasure in sexual murders, but many of us enjoy watching them when they are on our screens or in the newspaper.
Peeping Tom was one of the first movies to present events from the point of view of the killer. This makes him seem uncomfortably sympathetic and tragic, and the audience are called on to feel a reluctant identification with him.
The man who provides the voice of Mark's father is Michael Powell himself. The scenes are shot in Powell's own home, and the boy who plays the young Mark is Powell's son. When Helen finally watches one of Mark's murders on film, Powell places the camera in the same position that Mark wished to place it when he asked to film her reactions to his earlier film.
This identifies a problem not just with Mark and his father, but with Powell himself. What is movie if not a violation of its subject matter? Indeed one of Mark's victims is an actress, Vivian (Moira Shearer) who genuinely imagines that she is shooting a private film with him up until the moment that he kills her.
Finally in the movie's last image, the reel stops spinning, and the screen fades to red, as we hear the voice of his father on tape: "Don't be a silly boy. There's nothing to be afraid of." If only that were true.
I wrote a longer appreciation of Peeping Tom on my blog page if you would like to read more: https://themoviescreenscene.wordpress.com/2018/03/30/peeping-tom-1960/
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
09/05/23
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