Peeping Tom (1960)

Peeping Tom (1960)

Ahead of its time this above average thriller about a voyeuristic cinematographer who films the women he terrorizes and then kills while the camera is rolling was so scandalous in its day that it actually ruined the career of its British director (and uncredited producer) Michael Powell. His reputation was subsequently restored and revered in part because of another director Martin Scorsese who sought him out and found Powell living in obscurity and poverty! The horror drama’s story and screenplay were written by Leo Marks.

Carl Boehm (aka Karlheinz Böhm) plays the titled character Mark Lewis whose sadistic father (shown in flashbacks and played by Powell uncredited as an actor) was a respected psychologist who studied fear by inducing it in (and filming) his own son from an early age. Anna Massey plays one of Mark’s tenants in the home of his youth where he now takes on boarders; she lives with her suspicious blind mother (Maxine Audley) who drinks. Massey’s character Helen Stephens is attracted to Mark whom she tries to draw out of his self-induced shell and hermit-like ways; he lives on the second floor of the house half of which he’s converted from his father’s lab into a studio where he alone watches his personal murder movies. Moira Shearer plays a wannabe actress whose currently a stand-in for the leading role where Mark works as the movie’s cameraman; she becomes his second victim which puts a police inspector (Jack Watson) on his trail.

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