PEEPING TOM (1960)

Country: U.K.

Genre(s): Horror

Director: Michael Powell

Cast: Karlheinz Bohm / Anna Massey / Maxine Audley

Plot

A serial killer obsessed with filming his victims in their last moments begins a romantic relationship with the young woman who lives downstairs from him.

What I Liked

Often referred to as the British “Psycho,” “Peeping Tom” was made the same year as that more famous Hitchcock film and it is hard not to draw comparisons between the two.  Both involve socially awkward young men who are in fact serial killers.  Both men were traumatized during childhood by domineering parents and are still obsessed with pleasing their now deceased parents.  Both men rent out rooms to guests while they live above, in self-imposed seclusion.  But there are also great dissimilarities and “Peeping Tom” deserves to be judged on its own.  Instead of the out-of-the-way Bates Motel from “Psycho” we have the urban landscape of London inhabited by Mark Lewis, the title character.  Karl Bohm plays Lewis as something of a man-child at times – idealistic and emotionally frail – and at other times as a cold egomaniac – bitter and manipulative.  That’s not to say Bohm’s performance is inconsistent, but rather that he makes the character seem truly disturbed, insecure, and unpredictable.

Though it is considered a precursor to the slasher films that would develop in the 1970s, the body count in this film is decidedly less than those of the movies that followed it.  Also unlike most of those films, the fear here is not generated by the fact that the killer is some huge or powerful figure who relentlessly stalks his prey, but rather that he seems by sight a rather normal, nondescript guy.  Through much of the film, Lewis is just someone who slinks around anonymously in the background, completely disregarded by those around him.  So here the killer isn’t the supernatural monster of earlier horror films.  Nor is he the hulking masked killer of later slashers.  He could be any one of the people we live and work amongst.

What I Didn’t Like

*spoiler alert!*

The guy kills with his camera?  Really?  He literally uses a spike on the end of one of the legs of his camera to impale the women through the throat.  While the filmmakers later on relate this to his motivation for killing, it still feels like a cheesy gimmick and not particularly frightening.

One of the scenes where this weapon is used was particularly ridiculous, but not exactly for that reason.  In one of the scenes, an ambitious actress dances in front of Lewis, thinking he is setting up a shot for a scene they are to film together in secret.  The whole thing is preposterous and seems contrived, simply put in for a gratuitous little dance number in the middle of this psychological thriller.  It was awkward and not at all believable.

Most Memorable Scene

The opening scene where we watch through the killer’s eyes as he follows a victim through the city streets, up a flight of stairs, and into her bedroom might seem slightly cliché today, but I doubt moviegoers of the period had that impression.  “Peeping Tom” was a very controversial film for its time and not in small part because of scenes like this that made the audience feel as though they were participants in the murder as sadistic voyeurs.  Watching it, I was  left with the impression that John Carpenter ripped off the entire opening sequence of “Halloween” from “Peeping Tom.”

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5