Peeping Tom

1960

101 mins

In Michael Powell's (The Red Shoes) horror classic from 1960, a young man murders women, using a movie camera to... More

In Michael Powell's (The Red Shoes) horror classic from 1960, a young man murders women, using a movie camera to film their dying expressions of terror. This film was branded as "sick" and "nasty" by critics at the time, but is now considered a masterpiece.

A lonely, unfriendly, sexually repressed fellow, Karl (Mark Lewis) is obsessed with the effects of fear, how it registers on the face, and the behaviour of the frightened. This obsession dates from the time when, as a child, he served as the subject of some cold-blooded experiments in the psychology of terror, conducted by his own scientist father.

As a grown man, he becomes a compulsive murderer who kills women and records their contorted features and dying gasps on film. His ongoing project: a documentary on fear. With 16mm camera in hand, he accompanies a prostitute to her room and stabs her with a blade concealed in his tripod, all the while photographing her contorted face in the throes of terror and death...

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Where to watch Peeping Tom

Peeping Tom is available to stream in the United Kingdom... More now on Amazon Video and Apple TV Store and BFI Player Rentals and Curzon.

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Peeping Tom | Ratings & Reviews

"Stripped of its color and some excellent photography plus imaginative direction by Michael Powell, the plot itself would have emerged as a shoddy yarn"

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Variety

"Peeping Tom's rediscovery, I fear, tells us more about fads in film criticism than it does about art."

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The New York Times

"Today, thanks largely to a 1980 revival engineered by Powell enthusiast and fellow director Martin Scorsese, Peeping Tom is rightly seen as a horror classic and sophisticated psychological journey."

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San Francisco Chronicle

"Powell is a virtuoso of camera use, and in ``Peeping Tom'' the basic strategy is to always suggest that we are not just seeing, but looking. His film is a masterpiece precisely because it doesn't let us off the hook, like all of those silly teenage slasher movies do. We cannot laugh and keep our distance: We are forced to acknowledge that we watch, horrified but fascinated."

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Roger Ebert

"One of the first -- and still one of the best -- cinematic journeys into the mind of a psychopath."

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Empire Magazine

"Branded as "sick", "nasty", and "beastly" by major critics upon its 1960 release, "Peeping Tom" was consigned to a public dustbin of disdain, along with the career of director Michael Powell. These were rash and despicable responses to a film that is nothing of the kind..."

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