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Peeping Tom

Now Playing 1h 49m Horror Mystery & Thriller List
95% Tomatometer 65 Reviews 85% Popcornmeter 10,000+ Ratings
Loner Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) works at a film studio during the day and, at night, takes racy photographs of women. Also he's making a documentary on fear, which involves recording the reactions of victims as he murders them. He befriends Helen (Anna Massey), the daughter of the family living in the apartment below his, and he tells her vaguely about the movie he is making. She sneaks into Mark's apartment to watch it and is horrified by what she sees -- especially when Mark catches her.
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Peeping Tom

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Critics Consensus

Peeping Tom is a chilling, methodical look at the psychology of a killer, and a classic work of voyeuristic cinema.

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Critics Reviews

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Budd Wilkins Slant Magazine Michael Powell’s elegant and disturbing Peeping Tom turns its camera eye on an unhealthy obsession with all things cinematic. May 24, 2024 Full Review Anton Bitel Little White Lies Here voyeurism itself looks outwards and inwards, confounding perpetrator and victim, filmmaker and viewer, camera and phallic weapon, while observing a pathology as metacinematic as it is psychiatric. Jan 10, 2024 Full Review Kevin Maher Times (UK) The film remains dangerous and brilliant... Rated: 5/5 Oct 27, 2023 Full Review Dennis Harvey 48 Hills Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger together created films of unusual conceptual ambition and high style for UK cinema... Aug 30, 2024 Full Review Matt Brunson Film Frenzy There have been many movies suggesting that filmgoers are by nature voyeurs -- Hitchcock himself made a masterpiece in this vein with Rear Window -- but few have been as damning as Peeping Tom. Rated: 4/4 Jun 5, 2024 Full Review Michael J. Casey Boulder Weekly A movie like no other ... Powell has no interest in assuaging the audience’s feelings or letting them know it’s all right and everything will be fine. Rated: 5/5 May 9, 2024 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

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Julian S “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. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 09/30/24 Full Review Audience Member First class suspence thriller I remember it well . Time for a rewatch Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 08/23/24 Full Review Jonathan O 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. Rated 5 out of 5 stars 07/12/24 Full Review babarizam D One of a greatest movie in the history of cinema. Rated 5 out of 5 stars 07/09/24 Full Review 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 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 out of 5 stars 11/30/23 Full Review Read all reviews
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Movie Info

Synopsis Loner Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) works at a film studio during the day and, at night, takes racy photographs of women. Also he's making a documentary on fear, which involves recording the reactions of victims as he murders them. He befriends Helen (Anna Massey), the daughter of the family living in the apartment below his, and he tells her vaguely about the movie he is making. She sneaks into Mark's apartment to watch it and is horrified by what she sees -- especially when Mark catches her.
Director
Michael Powell
Producer
Michael Powell
Screenwriter
Leo Marks
Distributor
Astor Pictures Corporation, 20th Century Fox, Image Entertainment Inc.
Production Co
Anglo-Amalgamated Productions
Genre
Horror, Mystery & Thriller
Original Language
British English
Release Date (Theaters)
May 15, 1962, Wide
Release Date (Streaming)
Mar 11, 2017
Box Office (Gross USA)
$23.0K
Runtime
1h 49m
Sound Mix
Mono
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