Unfortunately Peeping Tom isn't on the air any time soon.
Programme Information
A chance to see the film that was reviled on release, nearly destroying the career of one of Britain's most distinguished directors, but has been judged in retrospect as an essential and influential addition to the psychological horror genre, aided in part by the support of Martin Scorsese's affection for the films and film maker.
Mark Lewis (Karlheinz Böhm), a young reclusive cameraman who also moonlights in the soft-porn trade. But his interest lies beyond just taking pictures of naked women. His psychologist father (a brief appearance by director, Michael Powell) insisted on using young Mark as a guinea pig in an experiment to study the symptoms of fear, filming the manufactured terrors of his young son, leaving the grown Mark as a psychopathic killer obsessed with capturing images of horror. His compulsion is to complete a film cataloguing the moments of death of his victims.
Into Lewis' life comes Helen Stephens (Anna Massey) who lives downstairs with her mother (Maxine Audley). Drawn to the gentle Lewis, she shares the filmed childhood experiences of the young man, never realising either the content of the other cans of film in his room nor the designs he has on studio colleague Vivian (Moira Shearer).
Powell's career as a filmmaker spanned over four decades and among his credits are the curious British film A Canterbury Tale and, from 1941 and in partnership with Emeric Pressburger, A Matter Of Life And Death, The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp and Black Narcissus. Powell was also fascinated by ballet and Shearer was to star in The Red Shoes and his The Small Back Room was hailed as one of the handful of films that summed up the bleaker side of post-war Britain. But Peeping Tom almost finished his career - he worked little after its release and died in 1990.
At its time of release, the British critics found it hard to deal with the brutal realism Powell brought to the film. Across the water, however, the Americans seemed to have a calmer and more studied point of view and could see value in a film that, over here, did not receive the critical support it deserved. Variety wrote, "Offbeat chilly yarn about a psychopathic killer. Saved from unpleasantness by shrewd direction and excellent photography... this pic is above the level of the run-of-mill horror film and has obvious box-office potential."
Film
(1960) 
(4 Star)
Add a comment