Peeping Tom

1960 film by Michael Powell

Film · TMDB

7.5

Loner Mark Lewis works at a film studio during the day and, at night, takes racy photographs of women. Also he's making a documentary on fear, which involves recording the reactions of victims as he murders them. He befriends Helen, the daughter of the family living in the apartment below his, and he tells her vaguely about the movie he is making.

Released: 1960-04-07101 minDir: Michael PowellHorror, Thriller, DramaBudget: $150,000Box office: $83,957

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Cast

Karlheinz Böhm as Mark Lewis
Moira Shearer as Vivian
Anna Massey as Helen Stephens
Maxine Audley as Mrs. Stephens
Brenda Bruce as Dora
Miles Malleson as Elderly Gentleman Customer

~27 min read

Article

Peeping Tom is a 1960 British psychological horror-thriller film directed by Michael Powell, written by Leo Marks, and starring Carl Boehm, Moira Shearer, Anna Massey and Maxine Audley. The film revolves around a serial killer who murders women while using a portable film camera to record their dying expressions of terror, putting his footage together into a snuff film used for his own self-pleasure. Its title derives from the expression "Peeping Tom", which describes a voyeur.

The film's controversial subject matter and its extremely harsh reception by critics had a severely negative impact on Powell's career as a director in the United Kingdom. However, it attracted a cult following, and in later years, it has been re-evaluated and is now widely considered a masterpiece, and a progenitor of the contemporary slasher film. The British Film Institute named it the 78th-greatest British film of all time, and in 2017 a poll of 150 actors, directors, writers, producers and critics for Time Out magazine saw it ranked the 27th-best British film ever.