Peeping Tom (1960)

There are legendary movies that have destroyed directors' careers.  Freaks took down Tod Browning, while Heaven's Gate managed to not only destroy Michael Cimino's career but nearly take down United Artists with it.  Many times that damage is permanent.  Even though those movies reevaluated over the years it was too late for the directors.  Browning was long dead by the time Freaks became a cult hit and Michael Cimino continued to make high budget epics fueled by his ego, resulting in the public and critics ignoring Heaven's Gate for decades despite the fact that, despite everything, he actually made a good movie.  

Michael Powell, who along with Emeric Pressburger made a number of popular and acclaimed movies throughout the 1950s, is one of those to have their career ended by just one film.  Psycho had pushed boundaries of the Hays Code and even began to redefine how movies were presented in the U.S.  It was not without controversy but, in Alfred Hitchcock's case, the controversy helped sell the film.  Powell gambled that the same thing would happen with Peeping Tom.  Instead, he saw his reputation stained and his entire career come tumbling down around him.

Mark Lewis (Karlheinz Böhm) is a camera operator for a major studio.  He also has a couple of side hobbies: pornography and murder.  He likes to kill women while filming them so he can watch the murders again and again.  He has his own private viewing and darkroom as he inherited the building he lives in from his father (Powell), a renowned psychologist who used Mark as the basis for his books on fear and still uses much of the equipment.  In his mind he is filming a documentary.

The first murder, a prostitute, gets the attention of the police, as does Mark when he is seen filming the crime scene.  Still, no one suspects him, although that changes once he murders Vivian (Moira Shearer), one of the supporting actresses on the current movie he is working on.  He also begins connecting with one of his building's tenants, a young woman named Helen (Anna Massey).  Helen's mother (Maxine Audley) knows something is off and Mark tries his best to keep Helen away from him, knowing what he is and that, at some point, what he must do when the police finally close in.

Peeping Tom is one of Martin Scorsese's favorite films and we have him to thank for the fact that it is available as it is.  He is also responsible for reviving Powell's career late in life.  The movie was pulled from theaters shortly after its release with critics calling it perverted and morally reprehensible.  The public didn't get too much of a chance to judge.  It did come to the U.S., but in a censored version (which is the one normally shown - Pamela Green's breasts are covered in most release copies) but didn't do well.  Not because of any major outrage on this side of the pond, but because Psycho was such a popular film that Peeping Tom got little to no attention. 

That is a shame because this is the better movie.  Psycho is well crafted and has a number of surprises and, due to that, meant audiences couldn't pop in any old time like they usually did and expect to understand what was going on.  However, it also has the moralizing speech at the end and a middle that drags a bit.  Peeping Tom isn't a fast-paced thriller by modern standards but it stays consistent throughout and successfully presents us with a protagonist that is the killer.  It's quite gritty for a movie from 1960, reminding me more of something from the 1970s.  It is considered, by many, to be the first slasher film, but it is more than that.  It is one of the first to give us a character like Mark Lewis and expect the audience to have some sympathy for him while still loathing him.

Because of the way the movie is constructed and the use of sketchy locations the film feels like something about 10 years ahead of its time.  The same critics who called Powell morally corrupt and all other sort of names would have been praising him if the movie had come out at a different time.  The performances of Karlheinz Böhm and Anna Massey are among the best of any horror film and should have been up for awards, as should the script and the cinematography.  However, the outrage of a few ended up locking this away for years.  It was just luck that Powell was redeemed within his own lifetime. 

Peeping Tom (1960)

Time: 101 minutes

Starring: Karlheinz Böhm, Anna Massey, Moira Shearer, Maxine Audley

Director: Michael Powell