Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) spends his days working the cameras at a film studio and his nights moonlighting as pin-up photographer and documentarian. He always carries a camera wherever he goes, photographing seemingly mundane objects as buildings and people. Lewis seems like a harmless sort of chap, but the dark secrets swirling in his mind would give the stoutest soul pause. He is a Peeping Tom, always gazing into windows or using his camera to spy on the intimate details of other people's lives. His illness seems to come from his childhood, when his famous psychologist father used Mark as a test subject in his work on human fears. Father would set up a camera in different rooms of the house, along with a tape recorder, and proceed to torment his son in various ways in order to monitor the boy's reaction. At some point in the proceedings, young Mark equated women with his terror fits, and as a full grown man he has decided to conduct his own amateur experiments. With camera and tripod firmly in tow, Lewis tricks women into situations where he can murder them and record their fear on celluloid. His first victim is a woman of the night, the next a would be actress at the studio. Mark initially gets away with his crimes because he blends easily into the background. He's polite to a fault, quiet in manner and movement, and solitary. He spends most of his time in the huge dark room at his house, endlessly replaying his sordid film footage and anguishing over his painful childhood.

Enter Helen Stephens (Anna Massey), an aspiring author and tenant in Lewis's house. Young Stephens notices Mark when she sees him staring into her apartment during her birthday party. Intrigued, Helen follows Lewis up to his apartment, discovers he owns the house and acts as its landlord, and witnesses some of his bizarre behavior. Despite the uneasiness of their first meeting, Mark and Helen become fast friends. In fact, Lewis takes such a shine to Helen that the mere idea of "photographing" her--code for committing another murder--shocks him to the very marrow of his being. Helen really likes this man even though her blind, alcoholic mother despises young Lewis because she has an intuition that he is up to no good. Things begin to turn south for Mark when the police launch an investigation into the murders, Helen's mother confronts him about his activities, and he learns that his little problem will take years of therapy to overcome. Lewis loses his cool as the authorities close in but discovers a peace of sorts during the film's conclusion.

Modern audiences will scratch their heads as they try to figure out why "Peeping Tom" was so controversial when it first came out. I think the primary reason this movie shocked British moviegoers and critics concerns how the movie presents such an appalling criminal as a figure worthy of sympathy and outright pity. No one wants to feel for a murderer of young women, but Powell's movie often gives Boehm's character endearing traits. When Helen comes to Mark requesting his aid with the photographs in her soon to be published book, Lewis visibly enthuses that anyone would honor him with such a request. The guy is genuinely happy about Helen's success, and further confounds audience perceptions by buying her a very nice brooch for her birthday. He gives her this gift not as a means for tricking her into a situation where he can victimize her, but because he likes her, respects her, and wants her to be happy. There are a few other reasons why "Peeping Tom" scandalized the British film industry, probably reasons best left unelaborated on here, but the film's refusal to judge Mark Lewis's behavior is probably the biggest reason for the insults heaped on this picture.

I liked the film even though it is a relatively bloodless affair. Carl Boehm's performance as the tortured Mark Lewis provides the primary impetus for viewing this film. He captures perfectly the concept of a scared, tormented little boy wrapped in a man's body. Hats off to Criterion as well; they did a grand job with the widescreen picture transfer and the heap of extras included on the disc. There's a stills gallery, a trailer for the film, a lengthy documentary about screenwriter Leo Marks, and a commentary by one of those hoity-toity film historians. Don't go into this movie looking for a gory thriller. What you will find is a colorful, quiet movie about a very disturbed young man looking for a way out of his personal darkness.


A VERY British psycho indeedy   December 16, 2002
 23 out of 25 found this review helpful

I first saw this film back in the 80's on British television, and was completely unaware of its history and background. I found it a very striking film, which explores - using the device of a serial killer photographer - the voyeur that is, to some extent, in all of us.

The film is difficult to categorize; thriller, drama, psychological horror, romance... to some extent it's all of the above, but I guess I'd say it's closest to a psychological horror/thriller film. But be warned, you'll find no unstoppable cyborg killers, no chainsaw wielding crazies, no killer aliens bleeding acid, or teenagers being sliced `n' diced ad nauseum; if that's what you want, there're endless films, both good and bad, that will do the job. No, "Peeping Tom" deals with the desperate, abject "horror," that is born of a tortured human soul.

The film certainly doesn't hang around, and gets right down to business from the opening scene, which has the main character, a film technician named Mark Lewis, played by Karlheinz (Carl) Bohm, stalking and killing his first victim, one of London's many "streetwalkers." This opening scene sets the tone for most of the rest of the film, a feeling of seedy desperation.

Mark keeps it together in his everyday life, but he is horribly psychologically damaged by the "research" his father, a famed doctor of psychology, carried out on him as a child, and desperately driven to act out his own twisted revenge on those around him. Mark's father was researching the effects of fear on the human psyche, and used his own son as a clinical guinea pig throughout his childhood; now the child is grown, and driven by his own internal demons to complete his fathers work.

But Mark wants to take his fathers work one step forward, not only is he obsessed with `fear', but he is consumed with the idea of "seeing" it, of "capturing" the face of fear with his camera, as if somehow that will bring him the ultimate understanding. And so it is that he sets out to murder Women, and films their last moments as he does so, creating his own "snuff movies," that he watches over and over again in his darkened apartment, desperately looking for something that only he can see.

And while he's not working in a film studio, Mark earns a little extra on the side by shooting porno pics in a room over a newsagents! This actually leads to what is probably the only deliberately comical scene in the whole film, when Mark reports for `work' one evening, only to find an elderly gentleman in the shop perusing the special "views" that are for sale, "under the counter." There is a second scene in the film that raises a wry grin; Mark is in the street filming the police investigating his murder of the prostitute. A man walks up to him, and assuming he's a reporter, asks him what paper he works for, "Oh, The Observer," Mark replies with a knowing smile.

But Mark's life is not all horror and desperation; into it comes love and happiness in the shape of a girl, Helen Stevens, played by Anna Massey, who lives downstairs in his building. Helen is an ingenue, an innocent, in every sense of the word. She lives with her blind mother, and is as far removed from Mark's worlds, both his professional one at the studio and the porn operation "after hours," and his internal nightmare existence, as it is possible to be.

He opens up to her, and in a moment of trust, of empathy, shares with her a glimpse of his tortured childhood, by showing her some the film his father took of HIM, while he carried out his research! How can Mark reconcile these two worlds? Will he choose to live in the light with Helen, or will he be cast into horrifying darkness and damnation by his internal demons, driven to take ever greater risks in his quest to "see" what he so desperately needs to see; will Helen herself, or her mother, be sacrificed to this end?!

Karlheinz Bohm's performance as Mark is wonderful; he's a monster, he was MADE a monster by his own father, he knows it, but he's a monster all the same, only, he doesn't WANT to be a monster! And herein lies the "problem" with "Peeping Tom;" Mark is an incredibly sympathetic character! We the audience are aware of all this, and yet we want Mark to change, to be happy with Helen, to help her with the children's book she's writing, but he's a killer of Women, and worse, he's driven to kill time and time again. There's a scene where he `toys' with one of his victims on a studio soundstage that reminded me of the way a cat will `play' with a bird or mouse before moving in for the kill. An incredible, cold-blooded performance by Bohm.

It's difficult, if not impossible, to view the film NOW, with the sensibilities of those who watched when it came out in the early 60's. The film opened to a roaring, and unanimous, tide of disgust and revulsion on the part of the London critics, and was pulled from the cinema circuit within a week of its release. One of the worst reviews went as follows; "The only really satisfactory way to dispose of "Peeping Tom" would be to shovel up and flush it swiftly down the nearest sewer. Even then the stench would remain!"

The film was "lost" for nearly 20 years, before being rediscovered by the likes of Martin Scorsese. This is still a somewhat uncomfortable film to watch, and the last 10 minutes or so, when Mark realizes the game is up, have lost none of their power to chill.


Disturbing and all the more memorable for it   April 4, 1999
 17 out of 18 found this review helpful

Michael Powell is one of the great British film directors, his credits including such diverse fare as The Thief of Baghdad, the Red Shoes and the unforgettable Stairway to Heaven. Peeping tom was his first and only foray into horror.Though this film is often compared to Psycho (Powell worked with Hitchcock in the 20's and 30's before Hitch moved to the States), it is different in several respects. First, the film is told entirely from the point of view of the killer. we don't have the luxury of really getting to know our victims the way Hitch lets us know Marion Crane. Secondly, our killer, Mark Lewis (played quietly by Karl Boehm), seems to regard his being caught by police as inevitable, and is in fact preparing to film his apprehenshion as part of his perverse "fear documentary". Thirdly, Powell filmed his masterpiece in sickeningly vivid color, allowing us no distance between the killer and his acts.The film was critically reviled upon its initial release in 1960. Though sad, it's easy to understand. Powell wanted to include the audience in Mark's disturbing voyeurism, essentially implicating them as well. Since film are essentially a socially acceptable form of voyeurism, it's easy to see why critics, who make their living watching movies, might have been insulted. Since critics are to the arts what pigeons are to statuary, they deserve it.Many people might shrink from this movie due to its disturbing nature and lurid subject matter. Too bad. It's very well made and has something pertinent to say about cinema, human psychology, and the world around us. Many people sometimes think that movies about bad people are bad cinema. The only depressing movies are badly made ones. Peeping Tom is a great movie about a bad person.


"I like to understand what I'm shown."   June 27, 2005
 17 out of 19 found this review helpful

That's what Helen tells Mark in his projection room. Helen gets her wish later, when she watches a film Mark shot, and she gradually realizes it's not staged, but a real murder. Helen wants Mark to tell her that it's "just a film, isn't it?"

We've already seen the terror on the faces of women Mark has killed, so we know what Helen sees. We can't turn away any more than she can, even as she backs out of the room, knowing but not wanting to admit that the man she loves put a blade through women's throats and photographed them watching their own deaths with a mirror attached to the camera.

Like Psycho, Peeping Tom is the story of a grown-up child who can't get rid of a parent. But Peeping Tom is better. The characters in Peeping Tom are more believable than the puppets Hitchcock moves around to create his "pure cinema." As freakish as Norman Bates is, as a personification of insanity he's as much a straw figure as Mother in the attic.

Peeping Tom offended its audiences so much that it was pulled from theaters, wrecking director Michael Powell's career, so the story goes.

Peeping Tom isn't more violent or sexually explicit than other movies from the time. We turn away from the victims as Mark's blade enters their throats. Even when he uses his camera-weapon on himself we don't see any blood. More horrific is Anna Massey as Helen watching the snuff film Mark left on the projector. (Did he leave it for her to find because he wanted her to see "the documentary" he was making, the way she showed him the children's book she was writing?) The scene that made me cringe the most was Mark playing tape recordings his father (an experimental biologist) made while exposing his son to frightening stimuli. We hear the young Mark screaming; we have to imagine what is making him scream.

So Peeping Tom is upsetting, but also traditional. It hints more than it shows. Why did people react to it so much more violently than they did to Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) or Georges Franju's Eyes without a Face (1959)? Was it the just the difference between British vs. American or French sensibilities? Since World War II at least, the British have tolerated movie censorship more than other Europeans or Americans. Stanley Kubrick had the same kinds of problems with British critics and censors with A Clockwork Orange (1971) that Powell did with Peeping Tom. And Thatcherite Britain went nuts over the "video nasties" controversy in the 1980s.

When I finally saw the DVD of Peeping Tom, two things struck me that might have made people so upset when it came out.

First, the title may have led a lot of moviegoers to think they were going to get a softcore porn flick/thriller, like the "erotic thrillers" on video in the United States. When they didn't get lots of violence or nudity, maybe they felt cheated. Even worse than cheated, maybe they felt complicit. After you've been through the experience of watching Peeping Tom you know exactly who the title refers to. Audiences in 1960 might have resented Powell's holding a mirror up to them, the way that Mark held a mirror up to his victims as he plunged the knife in.

Another reason audiences may have hated the movie might be the sympathy shown to the murderer Mark. And two things in particular could have antagonized moviegoers - - Mark's youth and his German accent.

The look of Peeping Tom - - especially the outside locations - - at times is schizophrenic. It goes back and forth between the gaslit forties and the swinging sixties. Sometimes it looks like the Blitz is still going on, the city is dark, the buildings shadowy and decrepit. Sometimes it's sunny and you expect to see mods and rockers on the street. Are we going to run into Mrs. Miniver or Twiggy?

This tension is in the first scene. We see two generations come into a stationery shop that sells "French postcards." First a dirty old man, fat, drooling over pictures, then a healthy young girl whose innocence won't allow itself to be stained by the pornographer (the shop owner) and murderer (Mark) inches away. She's from a different world.

The handsome Aryan-looking Carl Boehm is Mark. He speaks fluent English, but with a definite German accent. Mark's father was a renowned scientist. We hear his voice on tape - - middle-class, educated, Received Pronunciation. Quite English.

Of the subject a little: Peeping Tom is interesting linguistically. In the film Anna Massey as Helen has an accent that's sounds a touch archaic (not stagy, it sounds natural, just a little old-fashioned). But in Massey's interview for the DVD, which must have been done forty years later, her accent sounds like the Standard English of today. We also hear a film studio executive pronounce "memo" as "MEE-mo." Not exactly the Great Vowel Shift of the fifteenth century, but interesting.

So Mark's father (working at the same time as the real behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner, who also observed, if not experimented on, his child at home) is English. Mark's mother is dead. If we want to invent a reason for Mark's accent I suppose his mother might have been German.

Mark would have had to have grown up speaking German in another country for his English to sound the way it does, though. Or maybe Mark's father was bilingual and he and his German wife spoke German to Mark as part of another experiment.

Whatever the reason is that Mark sounds like a German, that may have been the real reason British audiences in 1960 were repulsed by the movie. The Germans had been the enemy twice in half a century. People still alive had lost parents and children to German soldiers and bombs. How dare they expect us to feel sorry for this murdering Hun sex fiend. How dare they expect us to be glad for the Germans and their "economic miracle" when we had food rationing for years after the war we won.

How dare they say we're like him.


Frank and Uncomfortable masterpiece in psychological thriller's history.   April 18, 2008
 17 out of 23 found this review helpful

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....