Peeping Tom - Special Edition [1959]

Customer Reviews:

HORROR MASTERPIECE.......2007-03-30

At last a decent DVD release for this disturbing classic from nearly fifty years ago. Vilified and treated like a video nasty on its initial release this trip inside the mind of a pyschopath is still so fresh and refreshing. Recommended for all students of serious horror, the tale of a disturbed young mind with a blade on his camera tripod filming his victims expressions as he kills them is utterly gripping. Acting all round is top notch in a production way ahead of it's time. Recommended.

Average customer rating:

Weird and wonderful
Over acted; let down at the denouement
"I'm from the Observer.."
The film that was scarier that Psycho!

Peeping Tom [1959]
Starring: Carl Boehm , Moira Shearer , Anna Massey , Maxine Audley , and Michael Powell
Director: Michael Powell
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B000056QAL
Release Date: 2001-03-05

Amazon.co.uk Review

Michael Powell lays bare the cinema's dark voyeuristic underside in this disturbing 1960 psychodrama thriller. Handsome young Carl Boehm is Mark Lewis, a shy, socially clumsy young man shaped by the psychic scars of an emotionally abusive parent, in this case a psychologist father (the director in a perverse cameo) who subjected his son to nightmarish experiments in fear and recorded every interaction with a movie camera. Now Mark continues his father's work, sadistically killing young women with a phallic-like blade attached to his movie camera and filming their final, terrified moments for his definitive documentary on fear. Set in contemporary London, which Powell evokes in a lush, colourful seediness, this film presents Mark as much victim as villain and implicates the audience in his scopophilic activities as we become the spectators to his snuff film screenings. Comparisons to Hitchcock's Psycho, released the same year, are inevitable. Powell's film was reviled upon release, and it practically destroyed his career, ironic in light of the acclaim and success that greeted Psycho, but Powell's picture hit a little too close to home with its urban setting, full colour photography, documentary techniques and especially its uneasy connections between sex, violence and the cinema. We can thank Martin Scorsese for sponsoring its 1979 re-release, which presented the complete, uncut version to appreciative audiences for the first time. This powerfully perverse film was years ahead of its time and remains one of the most disturbing and psychologically complex horror films ever made. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com

Customer Reviews:

Weird and wonderful.......2006-11-11

I watched this when I was young and thought at the time it was a cheap thrill 50's movie under the horror label.But since wating it in adulthood it as become one of my top 10 movies.

Over acted; let down at the denouement.......2006-10-27

I defer to those who find a more deep and meaningful message in this film, but I would say that the acting is almost as bad as Hammer Horror movies in the exagerated acting and over-reaction stakes, and the denouement isn't believable as regards the source of the horror as seen by the victims at their last.

A slow, plodding film which doesn't come anywhere near to Psycho (the original). But it is interesting to see it as a comparison to today's films as it is reckoned to be a milestone in cinema.

"I'm from the Observer..".......2002-03-18

This DVD is a vast, VAST improvement on the VHS edition of this wonderful film.
Presented in anamorphic widescreen, Peeping Tom shows the seedy-looking cinematography in all of its glory, and the soundtrack is pin-sharp, making the most of Brian Easdale's haunting piano music.
Buy this for the film, not for the extras.

The film that was scarier that Psycho!.......2001-01-12

Also released in 1960, Peeping Tom disgusted the censors and outraged the British Press to such a degree that Director Michael Powell found he had to move to Australia if he wished to continue his filmmaking career! The theme of scopophilia (pleasure from watching) is at the centre of this daringly ground-breaking movie as an affected cameraman (Mark) films the fear of the girls he murders to watch again and again! As he becomes emotionally entangled with his live-in tennant, his love for her becomes confused with his sociopathic desire to film her when she becomes frightened. A dark and interesting film, Peeping Tom addresses the very nature of cinema and the viewers' apparent complicity in the subject matter.

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