Peeping Tom

Original release: 16^th may 1960 (re-released November 19^th 2010)

Genre: Horror/Thriller

Run time: 101 minutes

Star rating: 5/5

Director: Michael Powell

Writer: Leo Marks (original story and screenplay)

Cast: Carl Boehm, Moira Shearer, Anna Massey and Maxine Audley

Up until the 1960’s the horror genre focused on adaptations of classic tale, such as Dracula and Frankenstein. In these films the villains were monsters, inhuman; they received very little sympathy from the viewer. However, the release of Peeping Tom in 1960, shortly before Hitchcock’s classic Psycho, would revitalise this stale genre.

Peeping Tom follows Mark Lewis a quiet, reserved and lonely young man who keeps his camera close by at all times claiming he is making a documentary. By day, Lewis works as a focus puller in a film studio and as a photographer of pornography, but by night carries out his gruesome obsession- he films women as he murders them to capture the fear on their faces and later watches them in his den. 

Since its release the film has become regarded as one of the greatest British horror films at a time when fantastical monsters ruled the genre Powell introduced a new type of villain, the human psyche where the evil lay in the modern world.  However, upon its initial release the film critics were disgusted and the severe backlash left Powell excoriated from the industry and his career never fully recovered. The film was not just controversial for its use of graphic violence (in fact very little violence actually occurs on screen) but also for its presentation of taboo subjects, in particular pornography which, although part of society, had never been represented in mainstream cinema before Peeping Tom’s release. 

One of the most unique aspects of this film is the central theme of voyeurism. Lewis’ obsession is driven by the voyeuristic pleasure gained by watching the fear on his victims face as he dies. Lewis always has his camera rolling during the film and clever camerawork by Powell allows the audience to watch through the lens of his camera, we become voyeurs, watching as innocent people are brutally murdered.  These techniques allowed the audience to see the world through Lewis’ eyes and are able to gain an insight into his psyche. A career defining performance by Carl Boehm makes this character feel human with the torment of his obsession reflected in his eyes. .  The essential aspect that derives from the sordid theme is that the character is redeemable Lewis recognises his sickness and obsession but feels compelled to finish his documentary of fear. It is his crushing loneliness and the after effect of his father’s experiments in fear conducted on him during his childhood that has left Lewis in this psychologically damaged state which makes it difficult for the viewer to feel anything but sympathy for him even as the film comes to its shocking but inevitable finale.

Verdict: Peeping Tom can be best described as a misunderstood masterpiece that has now become one of the greatest and most influential British horror films. It creates a climate of terror built from laying bare the intimate aspects of human relationships showing us the side of life we don’t wish to see.