Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8529 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-03-26
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL, Special Edition
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 97 minutes

Special Features
New and exclusive Introduction by Martin Scorsese New and exclusive Commentary by Ian Christie New and exclusive Interview with Thelma Schoonmaker, Oscar-winning Editor and Michael Powell’s widow Documentary ‘The Eye of The Beholder’ Documentary ‘The Strange Gaze of Mark Lewis’ Behind-the-Scenes Stills Gallery Original Theatrical Trailer Booklet containing essay by Ryan Gilbey, interview with Screenwriter Leo Marks and extract from Michael Powell’s autobiography ‘Million Dollar Movie’

Synopsis
An acclaimed and abhorred film about a man raised by a scientist who devoted his life to the study of the psychology of fear, using his own son as his guinea pig. As an adult the boy is obsessed with filming the deaths of beautiful young women, after causing them personally with his knife-wielding tripod. Powell aficionado Martin Scorsese brought the film out of obscurity in 1979.

Customer Reviews

HORROR MASTERPIECE
At last a decent DVD release for this disturbing classic from nearly fifty years ago. Vilified and treated like a video nasty on its initial release this trip inside the mind of a pyschopath is still so fresh and refreshing. Recommended for all students of serious horror, the tale of a disturbed young mind with a blade on his camera tripod filming his victims expressions as he kills them is utterly gripping. Acting all round is top notch in a production way ahead of it's time. Recommended.

Brilliant 1960 psycho-killer film unfairly panned by ignorant critics at the time
It's hard to believe that this is from Michael Powell (of Powell and Pressburger) the maker of such classic old films as "The Red Shoes", "Life and Death of Colonel Blimp", "Black Narcissus" "A Matter of Life and Death" and "Battle of the River Plate". The story and screenplay is by Leo Marks who had recently worked with and was recommended by Danny Angel (producer of "Carve her Name with Pride"). He'd asked Powell "How would you like to make a film about a young man with a camera who kills the woman that he photographs?" and the story developed from that.

Starring Anna Massey, Maxine Audley, Moira Shearer and Carl Boehm, "Peeping Tom" was released before Hitchcock's "Psycho" and its perceived porno connotations put an end to Powell's GB film making career - he went to Australia to see out his days. I have never seen so many contemporary nasty terms used to describe a film. The pious and probably hypocritical critics acting as the self-appointed moral majority absolutely panned it, using such phrases as "I am sickened", "sadism, sex and the exploitation of human degradation", "this beastly picture", "not even the hopeless East Pakistan leper colonies, the back streets of Bombay or the gutters of Calcutta has left me with such a feeling of nausea and depression as I got sitting through this film", "it should be flushed down the toilet", "salacious, rapacious and utterly boring", "a prostitution of the arts", "an insult to the film business". One wretch even went so far as to say that Powell displayed his vulgarity in "A Matter of Life and Death" and "The Red Shoes". This is all strong stuff indeed from the ignorant, arrogant people who, like the censor, would impose their morals and views on us all if they could.

Despite these pathetically blinkered views (even for 1960), it's a fine film, shot in the glorious Eastman colour of the time. A nice introduction by Martin Scorsese sums the film and position up. A case quote sums the film itself up even better though "One of the first and still one of the best cinematic journeys into the mind of a psychopath". Powell's son plays an uncredited role as main character Mark Lewis as a young boy (with Powell as his sadistic father).

Basically focus puller and part-time porno photographer Mark Lewis kills women with a camera on a doctored tripod, fitted with a knife and mirror so he can film their faces as he kills them and they can see their reflected faces as they die (nicely OTT for the moral majority of 1960).

My only criticism of this film, which is credited with influencing the likes of "Repulsion", "Blow Out" and "One from the Heart", is that it suffers from a rather poor ending.

The film comes not only with an informative 24 page booklet but a good few extras like documentaries and a commentary.

It won't disturb your dreams
I often wondered why Hitchcock had so royally ruined the ending of Psycho with the lamest of scenes, where a forensic psychiatrist "explains" the psychology of the killer in the most un-Hitchcockian way. After seeing Peeping Tom, I can make a guess. Michael Powell's film, released just 3 months before Psycho, has disturbing pre-echoes of Hitchcock's shocker, dealing with a psychopath whose urge to kill is fuelled by a hatred of a parent from whom he nevertheless can't break free. It was roasted by the critics, and effectively driven underground for forty years. Hitchcock must have taken fright at that, and felt that some kind of "reassurance" should be given to a terrified audience, for whom the motivations of Norman Bates might otherwise have been a complete mystery. So, kudos (if that's the word for something so negative) to Peeping Tom for having at least that much impact.

However, despite Martin Scorsese's advocacy, I have to declare the film a failure. Its basic premise is more exciting in summary than it turns out to be when played out on the screen. Michael Powell is better known as one half of Powell & Pressburger, and it isn't long before you're asking, "Where's Pressburger?" Or indeed anyone who might give this film some focus and tension. It might seem nit-picking to nit-pick at the background detail, but the fact is that every film needs it if it is to carry conviction. Powell's sensibilities belong to the 1940s, and a large problem is his unease with the "modern" world c.1960, unlike his more adaptable near-contemporary, Hitchcock.

List the most tiresome elements of the average British B-movie thriller of the time, and Peeping Tom has them all, simply because Powell couldn't think of anything else but to copy them. Plain-clothes policemen who wear raincoats with their collars turned up in all weathers; detective-sergeants whose idea of "surveillance" is to loiter about twenty feet away from the suspect with their hands behind their back, pretending to study the roof of the building opposite; inspectors who like to sit on the corner of a desk instead of a chair while testing someone's alibi - the whole box of visual cliches. It's film-making on auto-pilot.

And there are scenes that are simply pointless. A tense conversation in a boarding-house is interrupted when a man appears on the landing and walks past on his way to the bathroom. For some reason, the camera leaves off what it's doing and follows him - follows him all the way, watches him step through the door, watches him close it. What for? Who is he? Well, no one, really. Plot-wise, he's a non-entity. But the director can't forbear to track him, as if anything that moves deserves attention. In another scene a bigwig from a film company is a worried man - "Still behind schedule... Take a meemo Miss Simpson" (and he does say "meemo"), while an American voice on the intercom squawks away happily "MGM wan it, Columbia wan it, Anglo wan it..." What function does this scene have in the story, since it takes at least half a minute of screen time? No one knows. The bigwig is never seen or heard of again, and we never find out whether his project gets back on schedule.

We might overlook these pointless diversions if the scenes that were supposed to carry the drama didn't descend instead into melodrama. It should be frightening when the killer advances slowly towards his victim with a deadly spike aimed at her throat. But since he's lumbered with a camera too, and since she (Moira Shearer) is a trained dancer, we just wonder why she isn't nimble enough to step to one side, or even run away, instead of just saying "Mark, no...take it away, take it away!". But apparently none of his victims had the wit to take any kind of evasive action. Sadly too, Carl Boehm looks far too much like a matinee idol to allow us to take him seriously as a psycho-killer. Even Tod Slaughter did it better.

However, no film Powell has ever been involved in is completely devoid of quality. There is one scene involving a blind woman that does carry conviction, and reminds us of the dramatic skills that he showed to such effect in Black Narcissus. But it isn't enough to lift this film off the floor.