Peeping Tom - Criterion Collection

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Michael Powell lays bare the cinema's dark voyeuristic underside in this disturbing 1960 psychodrama thriller. Handsome young Carl Boehm is Mark Lewis, a shy, socially clumsy young man shaped by the psychic scars of an emotionally abusive parent, in this case a psychologist father (Michael Powell in a perverse cameo) who subjected his son to nightmarish experiments in fear and recorded every interaction with a movie camera. Now Mark continues his father's work, sadistically killing young women with a phallic-like blade attached to his movie camera and filming their final, terrified moments for his definitive documentary on fear. Set in contemporary London, which Powell evokes in a lush, colorful seediness, this film presents Mark as much victim as villain and implicates the audience in his scopophilic activities as we become the spectators to his snuff film screenings. Comparisons to Hitchcock's Psycho, released the same year, are inevitable. Powell's film was reviled upon release, and it practically destroyed his career, ironic in light of the acclaim and success that greeted Psycho, but Powell's picture hit a little too close to home with its urban setting, full color photography, documentary techniques, and especially its uneasy connections between sex, violence, and the cinema. We can thank Martin Scorsese for sponsoring its 1979 rerelease, which presented the complete, uncut version to appreciative American audiences for the first time. This powerfully perverse film was years ahead of its time and remains one of the most disturbing and psychologically complex horror films ever made. --Sean Axmaker

Description

A frank exploration of voyeurism and violence, Michael Powell's extraordinary film is the story of a psychopathic cameraman-his childhood traumas, sexual crises, and murderous revenge as an adult. Reviled by critics upon its initial release for its deeply unsettling subject matter, the film has since been hailed as a masterpiece.

Customer Reviews:

The morbid urge to gaze.......2007-08-06

This is quite an intriguing story, hailed by critics as the British equivalent of Hitchcock's Psycho. Both would make an outstanding double feature on a stormy night. Martin Scorcese claimed this is one of the greatest films depicting the mechanics of directing.

It's the story of Mark, who works behind the scenes at the film studio. He has a strange fascination with the camera, which stems from his childhood. His father had an incessant passion, actually a sadistic passion, with capturing every aspect of his son's life on tape. Never a free moment off the record, which would be tough for anybody. His dad also enjoyed catching the reactions of the nervous system to fear, especially in children. Mark constantly would wake up in the middle of the night, petrified by his father's twisted experiments.
So, of course Mark grew up with issues. Add to the fact that his mom died when he was young, so he lacked that motherly nurturing spirit to help offset his crazy dad's obsession. Does that sound like a crazy sex-fiend who loves to kill women in the making? Yep, you guessed it.
He would capture each murder on tape of course. There would be a hidden blade in the tripod of the camera, which would be the last thing his victims would see before they die.
As you watch him work, you get the uncomfortable feeling that you're the one peeping at the unlucky ladies. You become the voyeur. That's probably a big part of the reason this film was pulled from the theaters after one week. It essentially ruined the career of the director.
One thing I really enjoyed about this film was the psychological process the filmmaker uses to accomplish their goals with the actor or actress. I've heard of some pretty drastic tactics used by some directors. I remember hearing about John Singleton making his debut film, Boyz-in-the-Hood. He suprised the cast with live ammunition being fired from a machine gun in order to get them all to run frantically away. That's effective filmmaking.
There was a moment during Peeping Tom where Mark was alone with an actress, he was filming and trying to scare her. She said "I know you're trying to create atmosphere for me, but I just don't feel frightened". Silly b#$%ch, wait til he pulls the knife out and we'll see some Oscar worthy acting. Haha.

Peeping Tom is just plain brilliant filmmaking, no doubt about it. Don't miss it.

Peeping Tom.......2007-06-28

Released the same year as "Psycho" and offering many parallels, it's mystifying that Hitchcock's film was a hit, Powell's a fiasco. There is a claustrophobic immediacy to "Tom" that "Psycho" lacks- the film's in color and has a documentary feel, which may have hit 1960 viewers too close to home. Also, critics expected murder and mayhem from Hitchcock, not from the fabled director of "The Red Shoes". That aside, director Powell lived long enough to see his film vindicated with audiences and critics twenty years later, when friend Martin Scorsese oversaw its re-issue. "Tom" stands up as a virtual masterpiece of psychological horror, with Boehm bloodless and creepy in the title role, and Powell's inspired camera-work putting the viewer uncomfortably close to the wrong side of Mark's camera. A subtly perverse treat for horror and thriller devotees.

Not Worthy of It's Reputation.......2007-05-12

As a fan of Michael Powell's work "Peeping Tom" was a big disappointment. Not because of it's squeamish subject matter, rather, it just doesn't deliver the goods. There's alot of rhetoric here about voyeurism and cinephilia but it doesn't amount to much. The best I can say here is that Powell is still a master of color. Whereas other director's use black-and-white to ratchet a suspenseful mood Powell uses the full spectrum of colors to suggest horror. His use of the color red is interesting, particularly in a horror film where not a drop of blood is spilled. It was also nice to see Moira Shearer in an extended cameo doing an interesting Latin dance. Essential for Powell fans but I would recommend "Peeping Tom" to others with reservations.

"I'm photographing you photographing me...".......2007-04-29

"Peeping Tom" is one of the Criterion Collection's best kept secrets, it seems--I can't remember the last time I saw a psychological study as refined, beautiful, and disturbing as this one.

I'm not sure Michael Powell wanted to be "subversive" as one reviewer seems to think. Instead he created a groundbreaking study in voyeurism that doesn't allow any flimsy experimental ideas about what's going on: he implicates the whole of society and the viewer in this tragic tale of personal ruin, using the camera as a symbiotic vehicle of our ultimate culpability.

Outwardly it is the tale of a youthful killer, Mark Lewis, an unnaturally intense "photographer" in his spare time and assistant director/cameraman
in his daily life. A pathetic neurotic to everyday appearances, Mark is a shy young man who practically lives in a screening room he has meticulously constructed in the backroom of his apartment. The paradox of this bizarre character is so well done that we can't help but sympathize with him even while he claims victim after victim, recording their facial expressions as they die and adding each one to his "documentary".

What sets Mark apart from other night prowling monsters is the obvious reason for his state of emotional derangement--his father, a pathological scientist who wanted to learn about the nerve reactions of little children to fear, taped him his entire childhood while putting him in the most frightening situations imaginable for someone of that age. Dropping lizards on him as he slept, forcing him to view quite adult situations, etc. The brief sequences in which Mark reveals these reels to a young woman who lives in his apartment are more disturbing than anything else in the movie.

Mark takes his father's work one step farther. Not only does he want to know about fear, he wants to film other human beings in the state in which they are most afraid: when they are just about to die.

Powell doesn't let us off the hook here, however. Mark is a man who wants help, a way out of the demented darkness his life has become, but his desire for redemption comes far too late. Helen, a young woman with a worldly wise alcoholic mother, tries to pry Mark from the coffin of his apartment with some success; he enjoys a night out with her as any young man would, and she even manages to separate him from his camera. The whole night, though, he can't stop gazing at people through windows and the brush of night. The paradox of his character is absolutely believable and all the more heartwrenching for it. The actor is fantastic.

Helen is the only pure thing in his life and he refuses to go near her with his camera. The whole thing happens relatively fast. As Mark knows, "they can only hang you once", and refuses to slow down the pace of his crimes even when the police end up profiling people on the set of his studio. The ending is a tragedy and comes off that way perfectly.

Martin Scorsese once remarked that all you need to know about directing a movie is contained in two films: Fellini's "8 1/2" and "Peeping Tom". I wouldn't be surprised if he was right, at least about this one. Great movie.

One Of The Best Films About Film Spectatorship.......2007-03-22

Peeping Tom's impact remains resolutely undiminished in the 47 years that has seen it go from reviled and despised horror film, to a classic of British cinema. Those 47 years have seen the rise and fall of many extreme examples of the horror genre (Italian giallo, slasher films, video nasties, Manga inspired mayhem and much more), but Peeping Tom remains persistently one of the most disturbing and disconcerting screen experiences, that puts a great deal of more visceral horror to shame. Michael Powell's film explores voyeurism, scopophilia, child abuse and the rise of psychology to damning effect. But perhaps most damning is Mr. Powell's assessment of the impact of cinema on spectators. Throughout Powell connects the act of spectatorship with the psychotic Mark Lewis, the camera becomes a phallic object to stroke and kiss the devices of cinema a fetish. As a result we are drawn into an uncomfortable association with the screen psychopath, as we vicariously join him in his personal screening room. The only person immune to this is a blind woman, simply because her ability to look has been removed. The look of the camera is associated with violence and perversity, and the only remedy against it is to close ones eyes or look away. That we continually open our eyes and eagerly follow Mark's descent into insanity, illustrates perfectly the power of Michael Powell's film. Furthermore Powell de-eroticises almost every aspect of the film; grim, seamy, dirty streets, crone like hookers, and perverted old men buying porn. This makes the conventional interpretation of the film as enforcing patriarchy and masculinity something that is disputable. An indispensable addition to every horror fans collection.

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