Peeping Tom

Plot synopsis:
Mark Lewis meets Dora, a prostitute, covertly filming her with a camera hidden under his coat. Shown from the point of view of the camera viewfinder, tension builds as he follows the woman into her home, murders her and later watches the film in his den as the credits roll on the screen.
Lewis is a member of a film crew who aspires to become a filmmaker himself. He also works part-time photographing soft-porn pin-up pictures of women, sold under the counter. He is a shy, reclusive young man who hardly ever socialises outside of his workplace. He lives in the house of his late father, renting most of it via an agent, while posing as a tenant himself. Helen, a sweet-natured young woman who lives with her blind mother in the flat below his, befriends him out of curiosity after he has been discovered spying on her on her 21st birthday party.
Mark reveals to Helen through home movies taken by his father that, as a child, he was used as a guinea pig for his father's psychological experiments on fear and the nervous system. Mark's father would study his son's reaction to various stimuli, such as lizards he put on his bed and would film the boy in all sorts of situations, even going as far as recording his son's reactions as he sat with his mother on her deathbed. He kept his son under constant watch and even wired all the rooms so that he could spy on him. Mark's father's studies enhanced his reputation as a renowned psychologist.
Mark arranges with Vivian, a stand-in at the studio, to make a film after the set is closed; he then kills her and stuffs her into a prop trunk. The body is discovered later during shooting by a female cast member who has already antagonised the director by fainting for real at points, which are not in the script. The police link the two murders and notice that each victim died with a look of utter terror on her face. They interview everyone on the set, including Mark, who always keeps his camera running, claiming that he is making a documentary.
Helen goes out to dinner with Mark, even persuading him to leave his camera behind for once. Her blind mother finds his behaviour peculiar, aware, despite her blindness, how often Mark looks through Helen's window. Mrs. Stephens is waiting inside Mark's flat after his evening out with her daughter. Unable to wait until she leaves due to his compulsion, he begins screening his latest snuff film with her still in the room. She senses how emotionally disturbed he is and threatens to move, but Mark reassures her that he will never photograph or film Helen.
A psychiatrist is called to the set to console the upset star of the movie. He chats with Mark and is familiar with Mark's father's work. The psychiatrist relates the details of the conversation to the police, noting that Mark has "his father's eyes." Mark is tailed by the police who follow him to the newsagents where he takes photographs of the pin-up model Milly (two versions of this scene were shot; the more risqué version is credited as being the first female nude scene in a major British feature, although even on the racier version, Milly only exposes one breast for a few seconds). Slightly later, it emerges that Mark must have killed Milly before returning home.
Helen, who is curious about Mark's films, finally runs one of them. She becomes visibly upset and then frightened when he catches her. Mark reveals that he makes the movies so that he can capture the fear of his victims. He has mounted a round mirror atop his camera, so that he can capture the reactions of his victims as they see their impending deaths. He points the tripod's knife towards Helen's throat, but refuses to kill her.
The police arrive and Mark realises he is cornered. As he had planned from the very beginning, he impales himself on the knife with the camera running, providing the finale for his documentary. The last shot shows Helen crying over Mark's dead body as the police enter the room.

Tags: insanity, suspenseful, atmospheric, home movie

Review:
The abrupt death of Powell's career can virtually be pinned down to one film, his most uncompromising portrait of madness, 1960's Peeping Tom. Powell's infamous shocker opens with a movie camera-wielding Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) following a prostitute to her boarding house room.
Mark's own experiment of filming his murder victims leads him on a downward spiral of insanity to the film's tragic conclusion.Despite Peeping Tom's sensational subject matter, Powell's intention was deadly serious: to make a sober study of sexual violence, as well as a meditation on the audience's role of voyeur.
But Britain's premiere 'glamour' pinup queen Pamela Green - Peeping Tom's photo-model and penultimate victim - would offer clues to Powell's hidden agenda.Green became his leading choice for the role, although she had not appeared outside 8mm stag films, after seeing a life-sized nude portrait in her business partner Harrison Mark's studio.
When Peeping Tom hit the big screen, it was rejected by the public and crucified by the critics, and left Powell's hitherto glorious career in ruin.A film cameraman, Mark Lewis (Karl Boehm), displays psychotic tendencies as he murders women with a spiked tripod attached to the bottom of his camera, capturing on celluloid their final screams of agony.
'John Doe' (Kevin Spacey) and 'Buffalo Bill' (Ted Levine) are laughable travesties of their real life counterparts, who seem harmless when approaching or luring a potential victim.One of the things that critics of his time could not forgive Powell is that he makes his killer 'Mark Lewis' (Karl Boehm) human and likeable.
a sensitive and intelligent young man, he is the product of bestial cruelty inflicted upon him in childhood (the scenes showing film of him being tortured as a boy by his scientist father are horrifying in the true sense of the word)This is a sophisticated film demanding of the viewer that he or she not only takes part in watching a compelling thriller but are also provoked into contemplating the forces that work on a man who commits such crimes.After watching 'Peeping Tom' one does not have the customary closure common in such thrillers of seeing a 'monster' the viewer could not emphasise with destroyed and the world made safe again, (much the theory behind the justification of capital punishment).
Michael Powell, the distinguished English director, probably contributed to his own demise from the film industry with "Peeping Tom", a movie that proved to be well ahead of its times and a masterpiece by this man who gave so much to enhance the industry in Great Britain.
In fact, it's a shame this was almost the last film he directed before going on to a kind of exile in Australia."Peeping Tom" is an exercise in voyeurism Mr. Powell, and his screen writer, Leo Marks, created to prove to what extent how one is capable of watching things one shouldn't watch.
Mark has been scarred for life thanks to what his own father did to him during a period of his growing years that formed his character into the reclusive man who feels at home doing the despicable crimes he commits.One of the strengths of the film is the amazing portrayal of Mark Lewis by the German actor, Carl Boehm, who made a superb contribution to the movie.
Moira Shearer, Anna Massey, Maxime Audley, Brenda Bruce, Bartlett Mullins, are among the most prominent players one sees in the film.The newly restored copy we saw as part of the retrospective shown at the Walter Reade this year has been enhanced in ways one didn't think would be possible and it's a tribute to the great director, who should have been proud of how today's audiences are reacting when they discover his movies that seem will live forever.It's ironic that Mr. Powell didn't get the recognition he deserved during his lifetime..
This aspect also helps explain why Peeping Tom was so fiercely condemned in 1960.(The scenes between Bohm and Massey remind me of those between Gustav Diesel and Louise Brooks in the last part of Pandora's Box (1928), and you can bet the Michael Powell was familiar with Pabst's work.)The idea that scrutiny = punishment was explored by Michel Foucault in his book Surveiller et Punir, which I happened to read a long time ago.
`Peeping Tom' all but completely destroyed Powell's career; and however much and for whatever reasons critics and audiences may have loathed the film, this simply ought not have happened - especially since, good or bad, it's manifestly the work of a director at the height of his powers.
Meanwhile , two police inspectors , Jack Watson and Nígel Davenport , are investigating the weird events .Disturbing subject matter about a psychopatic cameraman who uses his camera to record women's agonies , it is rendered breathtakingly by a great director , the British Michael Powell who performs briefly the part of Mark's abusive daddy , as he is shown on home movies harassing and tormenting the little boy ; furthermore , including a brilliant cinematography by Otto Heller.
While I do think that comparisons to its contemporary PSYCHO (1960) are a bit tenuous, it has to be said that both films can be thought of as belonging to the horror genre  in fact, PEEPING TOM was the third British "slasher" movie in a row, following HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM (1959) and CIRCUS OF HORRORS (1960) - but can also lay claim to being a very dark sort of black comedy.
No wonder, the film is saying, that he has grown into this disturbed person who has no real life away from either recording things on a camera, or watching the results in his darkened room.Anna Massey has perhaps the prime female role in the film, as Mark's downstairs neighbour Helen Stephens.
Norman, Have I Got a Friend for You. An effectively off-beat serial killer film from Michael Powell, the visionary director that gave us "Black Narcissus" (one of my favorites of all time) and "The Red Shoes." As with those films, he chooses to shoot everything in vibrant color, enhancing the luridness of this lurid story.Carl Boehm plays the disturbed young man who enjoys filming women as he kills them and then watching the films later.
PEEPING TOM plays it straight all the way through, effectively showing how a tormented childhood turned an innocent boy into a killer who wants to see the fear on his victim's faces.I watched it with interest but with a certain detachment, never becoming completely involved in the story.
I'm a fan of the Archers (their films A Matter of Life and Death and Colonel Blimp are masterpieces) but I cannot understand what Michael Powell was thinking of when he decided to make Peeping Tom. I've tried looking for the hidden depths, but there simply doesn't seem to be any point to this film.
i saw peeping tom on rob zombies underground cinema on turner classics,i have to admit it is a good movie,scary like Alfred Hitchcock's;psycho.but for some reason i did'nt think it was a movie in color.anyway its a highly recommended film.if rob zombie says its good i have to agree with him.he knows good horror/monster films.i don't really know anyone in the cast except Moira shearer, who did some movie called the red shoes,heard of it but did'nt see it.
What Mark also has is a deep dark obsession of photographing women whom he, in order to get the very full impact, murders as they realize their about to be run through with a steel spike attached to his movie camera!"Peeping Tom" is the obvious British version of the American horror classic "Paycho".
The movie even has an Alfred Hitchcock look-alike Milles Malleson in the film in what seems to be its imitating the great directors, "of the film "Psycho", cameo scene in it.Mark against his better judgment ends up getting very friendly with one of the tenants in his boarding house, that he inherited from his late father, mosey Helen Stephens, Anna Massey, who seems to be just crazy about him.
It's the start of Powell and Marks' ploy to make us complicit in Lewis' actions, and then the makers challenge us to sympathise with him as his back story is revealed and also as he struggles with his affections for Helen Stephens (Massey) in the present day.There is also a sly aside to the movie industry running through the picture, something which no doubt irked critics and film distributors back in 1960.
1960 was too early and, as a result, its director (Michael Powell) was pretty much blacklisted from ever making movies again.Powell, a Brit who influenced (amongst others) Martin Scorsese, was also responsible for the 1943 film "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp," an unarguable masterpiece."Peeping Tom" is about a man who videotapes his victims as he kills them.
Audiences, and critics, felt this very quickly and reciprocated the feelings, (by staying away from the movie in droves), virtually killing Powell's career stone-dead, (as with other highly talented directors who 'turned their backs' on the mere film-goer, such as Von Stroheim and Welles).Wind forward twenty years and the young Hollywwod 'Brat Pack' are aiming to rediscover mass popular film entertainment, (in the shape of "Star Wars", "Close Encounters", "Jaws" etc.), and 'discover' half of the team behind "A Matter of Life and Death", "The Red Shoes", (above all), "The Thief of Baghdad" etc.
And on the terms it's a a creepy, atmospheric masterpiece, a work of skill technically that should not be too lightly looked on as being as strong as that of the Red Shoes, and probably was ahead of its time in pressing forward the subjective angle of a mad killer as being more than just that.What's superb about just watching Peeping Tom is seeing how Powell, as he did with Red Shoes and Tales of Hoffmann, makes a unique color palette.
Another of those significant movies that helped to change the genre in the 60s is without a doubt Michael Powell's "Peeping Tom", a morbid tale of horror and suspense about voyeurism that follows that very same path of psychological horror and, like "Psycho" (released three months after "Peeping Tom"), elevates it to an art-form."Peeping Tom" is the story of Mark Lewis (Karlheinz Böhm), a young focus puller in a British film studio who aspires to become a filmmaker himself.
Unlike Hitchcock's "Psycho" (a movie often compared to "Peeping Tom"), the serial killer is not seen through the eyes of those around him, in this film we are living the story entirely from his perspective, discovering the person behind the psychopath personality as well as the reasons behind such a disturbed mind.
In a way, it's a deeper humanization of the serial killer character, although interestingly, it doesn't attempt to glorify him or justify him (like posterior movies of the same type did), as the movie centers on his attempt to stop doing what he knows is wrong and his desire to have a normal life.Using a strikingly beautiful color cinematography (by Otto Heller) and a remarkably skillful use of the first person viewpoint, director Michael Powell conceives "Peeping Tom" as a bizarre chant to the voyeur we all have inside, and the pleasure we get from watching others.
As Helen's mother, Maxine Audley is effective and has a couple of excellent scenes, although it must be said that the film ultimately belongs to Böhm and Massey, as its their relationship what becomes the central focus of the story.As one can imagine, this movie is not the typical horror movie, it's complex and dark, but also disturbingly very human; definitely not what people expected from director Michael Powell, whom along Emeric Pressburger made some of the most cherished British film of the 50s.
Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960) is a horrifying movie.The main character is even somewhat likable.I think it's far more interesting to have a bad guy with some good qualities than have him all bad.Maybe it's Karlheinz Böhm's ability to make Mark a sympathetic character.He's perfect for the role.Anna Massey is also perfect as Ms. Stephens.Her blind mother is played by Maxine Audley, and she does her part brilliantly.This is extremely psychological, mostly Freudian, portrait of this man, Mark Lewis.His scientist-father shot every moment of his growing with a video camera.That's why he has become this man, with his obsession.The movie ends very dramatically.I think it couldn't have had any other kind of ending..
And the scenes that were clearly intended to generate terror were, in the long run, the most laughable of all.One of Peeping Tom's biggest let-downs was actor Carl Boehm's disappointing portrayal of Mark Lewis, the film's psychotic title character.Boehm presented Lewis as such a nervous, effeminate, one-dimensional wall-flower that, before long, it became impossible for me to really believe that such a nothing-person as this could ever be capable of such brutally cruel and murderous crimes.With all of the sick & twisted serial killer movies that have since followed in Peeping Tom's footsteps over these past 54 years, it's hard for me to imagine that anyone could honestly get a genuine thrill of satisfaction out of watching this listless, out-of-date, thumb-twiddling dud..
The direction and cinematography are the stars in Peeping Tom. The film effectively ruined Powell's career - no one was expecting a serial killer film from the man who brought you Stairway to Heaven - but, looking back on it, it only seems like one of his greatest achievements.
At least, that's what Mark Lewis thinks in Peeping Tom. Mark is a shy and reclusive man on the outside, but inside he is deeply disturbed as he goes around with his camera, murdering women with it, filming their gruesome deaths the whole time.
PEEPING TOM is a psychological thriller with elements of horror, which, in a perverse way, examines fear and obsession of one voyeur.The main protagonist meets a prostitute, covertly filming her with a camera hidden under his coat.
Critically, by dint of Böhm's taciturn, sensitive and inner-struggling performance, Powell pegs Mark as both a victimizer and a victim, an approach doesn't fall in line with moral rigidity but sequentially humanizes our monster, particularly, by pairing him with a guileless if somewhat cheeky girl-next-door Helen Stephens (a feisty Massey, holds our attention in her brilliant reaction shots when the crunch demands), to whom he might have a slender chance of a normal relationship if he can suppress his morbid proclivity (at one point, she even successfully persuades him to have a date with her without his phantom limb, the 16mm movie camera), yet that faint, precious chink of warmth is inevitably diminished after his another wanton surge, he has no alternative but to exact his final act to seal his preordained seal, and simultaneously, sate his persisting fixation.Apart from Massey's counterpoising presence of innocuousness, other two supporting performances are also noteworthy, famed ballerina Moira Shearer (in her third and last collaboration with Powell), as a clueless stand-in Vivian, obliviously twirls around Mark as he carefully prepare for her impending quietus, makes a striking example of a beauty's tragic end, which is sheer in contrast to Maxine Audley's steely lucidity as Helen's blind mother, who is luckily spared for her visual unresponsiveness, a thinly veiled metaphor of an aging/unassuming woman's vanishing sex appeal (she is only three years older than Shearer).Deeply steeped in its counter-genre variegated shades and musician Brian Easdale's compelling virtuosity and cadenza, to all intents and purposes, PEEPING TOM thrives as a thought-provoking tall tale whose message might be well ahead of its time, but in terms of cinematic grandeur, it is a trailblazer that often imitated but rarely eclipsed..
An interesting journey into the mind of a serial killer that also touches on themes of voyeurism, loneliness, childhood trauma, sexual repression & the art of filmmaking, Peeping Tom was torn to shreds by critics when it premiered but just like any other film that was ahead of its time, it has garnered a cult following and is now regarded as a genre classic.Set in London, the story of Peeping Tom follows a lonely young man obsessed with the effects of fear and is making a documentary on it, the content of which involves him recording the final expressions of victims as he murders them.
Anna Massey is in as the girl next door but her work is mediocre at best while her mother, played by Maxine Audley, manages to leave an impression of her own despite her limited screen time.On an overall scale, Peeping Tom is a fascinating example of psychological horror that's skilfully directed by Michael Powell and is brilliantly steered by Carl Boehm's terrific rendition of his simultaneously creepy & pitiful character but there are slow patches in the middle that make the ride a bit tedious at times plus the interaction between our protagonist & his girl friend isn't quite engaging either.
It's a three-dimensionality of perceptions, one layer more disturbing than another.Mark was named after the screenwriter, and Powell played Mark's father in the footage, responsible for some of the most shocking conduct against a kid to be ever shown on a movie, that Powell's son played the son eliminates any doubt about the film's being a symbolization of the most pervert yet subversively brilliant aspect of film-making.And with the help of two great performances from Carl Boehm, soft-spoken, shy, handsome and crazy, the delightful Anna Massey who embodies our curiosity and her mother, Maxine Audley our suspicion, the film swings back and forth between the delights of watching and the horrors, the joy and the shock, the fascinating character study and introspection into the roots of voyeurism and the heart-pounding pioneer of slasher films, driven by an unforgettable jazzy tempo.Michael Powell's "Peeping Tom" accomplishes something that has probably no equivalent in the history of cinema: it captures all in one film the two diametrically opposed applications of cinema or to be more technical, the eye of a camera.
But Mark is a serial killer and wants to make documentary about his activities.Peeping Tom is a certainly a bold film for time and it easy to see why it was controversial when it was first released.