Year: 1960
Country: United Kingdom
Language: English
Number: 365
Director: Michael Powell
Starring: Carl Boehm, Anna Massey, Moira Shearer, Maxine Audley
In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock's american Psyco was released and horrified moviesgoers all over the world. But little did they know that a british horror thriller named Peeping Tom, horrified and was panned by both audience and critic so much that it ruined the until then successful director Michael Powell's career. However Peeping Tom gained cult following in the 1970s.
Peeping Tom is the story about the young man named Mark Lewis who works as a camera assistant on a film set. On his time off, he himself like to direct his own films, a documentary about people's reactions and fear of the unknown. That's right he's filming people that he murders, just so he can see them scream, snuff filming. His incomes doesn't come from his job alone, he also rent out apartments in his house, and one day a girl named Vivian who's very curious about this boy that has always lived there and whom she have not spoken to. And they fall in love, and Mark even show his some of her works, not any of his snuff material, but still some shocking footage about his father who liked to experimenting on Mark's fears. How will this turn out? Well I can't tell you that, but I promise you will not be disappointed.
Peeping Tom is as many of Powell's early pictures along with Pressburger, this is also a beautiful colored film. It something I actually don't mind, though it's the completely opposite of what Hitchcock did with Psyco, and sure this movie would be good in black and white, most because of the brilliant story itself. But the color in this film is representing reality, while some of Mark's footage is black and white. But I like it just that way it is with color, it's also representing the spirit of Powell and Pressburger's earlier films, remember how colors horrified us while watching The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus. How the color red, symbolized death.
This picture really blowed my mind. It's in many ways a metafilm, not just because some of the movie takes place on a film set. But most because of the fact that Mark himself makes a documentary. A documentary I actually who'd like to see. A cinematical version, of corse, not a real one, thank god, but so close to reallity as possible, a grindhouse horror flick. Peeping Tom is an excellent study of the horror when you know when you're going to die. Mark's motto is, everything he filming he have to kill. Peeping Tom is after my opinion among the greatest psychological horror films ever made.
Grade: A+
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