Peeping Tom-1960

Director Michael Powell

Starring Nigel Davenport

Top 100 Films #60     Top 20 Horror Films #16

Scott’s Review #127

Reviewed July 22, 2014

Grade: A

Peeping Tom is a brilliant horror film from 1960 directed by Michael Powell.

It is a British film released the same year as Psycho. They resemble each other as both have a more character-driven villain than many other contemporary horror films.

Both feature male killers with a sympathetic (to them) female.

Set in London, it tells the story of an assistant cameraman who kills his victims by using a camera with a spike on the end of it as he is videotaping the fear in their eyes, which he later plays back for his own psychological needs.

The killer has emotionally damaged himself and the film explores this aspect in depth; his father tormented him as a child with weird, traumatic experiments used on the boy for research.

I love this aspect of the film compared with other films of the genre, where the killer typically has no sympathetic aspects and whose motivations are usually explored minimally.

The audience has sympathy for this killer, which, strangely, is absurd and shocking.

Ahead of its time, viewers were initially turned off by the film at the time of release. Director Michael Powell’s (ironically playing the terrible father in videotape scenes) career was ruined.

Anna Massey (later to appear in the Hitchcock masterpiece Frenzy, 1972) plays the sweet-natured, girl next door who develops a crush on the killer. Her blind and boozy mother is a fascinating character as she suspects and strangely bonds with the killer.

The film has an erotic and voyeuristic quality that has been unmatched in horror.

Peeping Tom (1960) is now considered a masterpiece and I agree with that assessment. It is one of the most interesting and unique horror films ever made.