Good at times, yet still a lil camp
I heard about this film from Cynthia Freeland's book "The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror," which is a good book with a unique perspective on horror. Since the last film I had sought out from this book happened to be amazing (Roman Polanski's Repulsion), I tried again.

Peeping Tom must be one of those movies that need time and reconsideration through multiple viewings. The first time I saw it, it bored me and I fell asleep. The second time, I was intrigued by many parts, but as a whole found it disjointed and strange.

I understand how it could be a "masterpiece," but also think that since he was so reviled at the time he is given landmark status now to make up for the fact that his career was ruined.

The movie is about a man with sexual and psychological perversions who acts out on the torments he endured from his father--only his victims are women (mostly of ill repute: actresses, hookers and porn models). He is demented in his isolated world with his camera until he meets Helen and her blind mother. Through Helen, we learn all about Mark and his fractured self.

The concept of the movie is the real winner. Reading about it, you would think it the most brilliant script ever written. But the actual film is disappointing with this mindset. Some acting is overdone. Some scenes drag on, while others are cut short. You never see enough to understand (but this is where the terror lies, in the unknown!), yet in the end you see too much and it seems like Mark is now hamming it up. I also think that this film would have been better in black and white (like its companion Psycho, to which this movie will be eternally paired with, although I cannot figure out why, nor do I endorse such sentiments).

Check it out to see if it was worth a ruined career. Keep an open mind and remember--it is a movie for entertainment!

Frank and Uncomfortable masterpiece in psychological thriller's history.
Voyeurism, violence, perversion, and dark forbidden sexual desire. Michael Powell's most controversial, important and artistic achievement, also destroyed his carrer after the ferocious and merciless critics for this at-the-time outrageous, unbeliavable and shocking classic about the meditation and observation of murder and depraved cruelty.

Mark (Karl heinz) was profoundly affected by his father's creepy experiments, a psychologist who kept a video journal about his son's personal life and raw childhood fears, and that demential intrusion turned him not only in an apparently shy photographer himself, but in a violent, sexual-deviate, and menacing stone cold killer. Over the very afflictions that marked his life and as an traumatic extension of his father's visual research, he found over his work the way to satisfy his murderous and gruesome sexual appetites, in the most terrible but passionate way: To torture and murder women with the sharpened leg of a camera's tripod, while capturing the whole sequence on film. After the killing in front of the camera, he runs the films for his private pleasure, to explore and study the victim's agonizing expresions and reactions towards fear and death.

This macabre and unseen concept broke the stereotypes about permited reality on cinema, by creating a disturbing and horrific portrayal of a derranged film fan, on film. Without delivering excessive gore or even fear, the explicit and graphic aproach to murder and the dark atmosphere about madness and psychological mental trauma, were more than enough to raise hell back at the year 1960, while Alfred Hitchcock actually shocked the world of cinema with his mind-bending and creepy classic "Psycho". After destroying Powell's reputation, "Peeping Tom" eventually became a cult classic of the thriller genre, overthrowing standard after standard about any possible concept in post-noir cult-disturbing films.

As we witness the sickening and torturous obsession throught the viewfinder of Mark's camera, as we are forced to watch the pain and despair of the women throught Michael Powell's eyes, we slowly realize that it is we who feel uncumbfortable: When mark projects on screen the silent and savage murders, we find an unpleasant projection of ourselves, the appeal of the voyeurist pleasure to other people's pain, regardless of the degree of fantasy implied in cinema itself. We become silent accomplices as we observe Mark's erotic pleasures becoming the ugly side of the filmgoing experience and on-screen display of everyday's suffering. Powell drives us in depth, into the very essence of the darkest side of human behaviour, by indicating the complicity of the audiences over mark's atrocities.

Recomended, ultimate dark masterpiece in psychological thriller, the mind-bending but non-judgemental style of Powell's work is devastating. The haunted-by-the-past character of Mark, must be one of the most disturbing and psychotic portrayals of a lonely and traumatized sad killer. The audacious fetishistic voyeurism implied of the story, will reveal the very dark side of your soul, something that not even the less-daring milestone "Psycho" was capable of achieve. The documented emotional conditions of the twisted psyche or Mark are waiting for your presence: Come, the show's about to start....

It's more of a good laugh then suspenseful!
I saw some parts of this film. The suicide ending made me laugh really hard. It was just bad acting at the end. It was not scary, and I think it was trying to make a statement about our media culture going to the extremes. Mark seemed like the perfect sterotype of a mean German. I felt with the charachter when he wanted to kill the dancer and he kept rolling his eyes I wanted him to kill her too. It's good for laughs. If you want a good suspense film then watch Wait Until Dark.

It put me to sleep
This movie is about a guy who carries a camera with him everywhere he goes. He starts to kill people with the end of his camera, the camera has a little knife attached to it. He also has some unresolved childhood issues.

I tried watching this 3 times and everytime I tried I fell asleep within the first 25 min. Finally forced myself to watch the whole thing and it was hard to make it through.

The characters are like walking zombies. The classical music playing during the 'murder' scenes is annoying and not scary. In fact theres almost continuous classical/piano music playing throughout the whole movie.

Very boring actors, uninteresting characters, I was barely able to finish watching this. If youre interested in watching a guy take a camera in and out of his bag 20 times along with boring English dialogue and very lackluster suspense... watch it.. if not, dont even bother.

"Take me to your cinema"
PEEPING TOM singlehandedly destroyed the career of producer-director Michael Powell in 1960. Universally reviled by critics and basically ignored by audiences, the film slid into obscurity. Only now has PEEPING TOM begun to be recognized as a modern classic of the thriller genre.

Clean-cut Mark Lewis (Karlheinz Bohm) works as a camera operator at a London film studio, and moonlights as a photographer for "girlie pictures" above a seedy newsagency. He also hides a dark secret; where he stalks and murders lovely young women, capturing their last moments of sheer terror on his portable movie camera. Mark's neighbour Helen (Anna Massey) strikes up a friendship with him, but could her life also be in danger?

PEEPING TOM, filmed in glorious blazing Technicolor, is filled with intriguing performances and lots of underlying subtext. Bohm is mesmerizing to watch as the conflicted and tortured Mark, especially when his relationship with the Anna Massey character starts to bloom and he begins to start walking away from his dark and murderous desires. Bohm is best-remembered for his role of Emperor Franz-Joseph in the beloved "Sissi" trilogy--a far cry indeed from his intense performance in PEEPING TOM.

Michael Powell also got to reunite with his "Red Shoes" leading lady Moira Shearer, who plays Vivian, a stand-in at the film studio where Mark works. Vivian becomes another victim of Mark's bizarre fetish, but not before Shearer is showcased dancing an expressionistic jazz routine (a sequence again scored by "Red Shoes" composer Brian Easdale). Shearer always looked very lovely in Technicolor with her flaming red hair. I assume Powell called in a few favours by getting Shearer--who is the second-billed in the credits (despite her role being a supporting one).

Fans of good quality thrillers will get a real kick out of PEEPING TOM, a true classic of the genre, with lots of rewards for multiple viewing.