Review of Peeping Tom (1960) by James-Masaki R — 29 Apr 2011

Released the same year as Hitcock's Psycho and just as stylish and provocative, Michael Powell's Peeping Tom was a groundbreaking piece of horror cinema that explored voyeurism, pornography, and psychosis in a way unseen in cinema up until this point and not seen for quite a few years afterwards.

Featuring even more controversial subject matter than Psycho, Peeping Tom is focalized predominately around the pervert/killer from its opening seconds. Our introduction to the film is a lengthy point-of-view shot in which the killer films himself picking up a prostitute and then murdering her.

We quickly learn that this killer, this peeping tom, is actually a seemingly normal member of a local film crew with aspirations of one day becoming a director himself. But he already is a director in two different senses.

First, he makes money on the side by taking pornographic pictures and making porn films for a local film developer. Secondly, he spends his free time at night stalking and killing women while filming them.

But soon he begins to develop real feelings for a young woman who is interested in his "films" and his shadowy past in which he was a subject of his father's psychological experiments. A stylish, disturbing, and brilliant thriller, Peeping Tom is more than decade ahead of its time and remains a powerful examination of the perverse and the psychotic.