Peeping Tom **** (1960, Carl Boehm, Moira Shearer, Anna Massey, Maxine Audley) – Classic Movie Review 605

Director Michael Powell’s 1960 colour British psychological horror-thriller shocker Peeping Tom is an eye-opening insider’s look at voyeurism and the mechanics of the film-making process, disguised as a lurid psychological thriller. This nightmarishly disturbing horror movie is Britain’s answer to Psycho, and is legendary, though it hasn’t aged quite as well as Alfred Hitchcock’s classic. Critics attacked it outlandishly back in the day, but it eventually attracted a cult following, and has been re-evaluated sometimes perhaps too highly as a masterpiece.

Peeping Tom has long been saddled with a reputation as perhaps Britain’s most notorious film. Now, it’s the stuff of every second or third serial-killer movie. Like Psycho, it’s a trailblazer, way ahead of its time, for better or for worse. It certainly pushed the envelope, back then in 1960. That it seems incredibly ‘modern’ accounts for its continuing reputation and fascination.

Within the cinema industry, the bizarre backlash the film suffered desperately damaged Powell’s career, which never really recovered. That’s quite hard to imagine or understand now, but there it is. The director’s technical skill and screenwriter Leo Marks’s fervid imagination are unquestionable in a movie that, once seen, can’t fail to haunt the mind for ever. One unsettling scene follows another in gruesome succession, cinematographer Otto Heller’s visuals are very striking, and Powell’s use of sound and music is imaginative.

The masterly Carl Boehm (aka Karlheinz Böhm) gives a chillingly creepy performance as loner Mark Lewis, the photographer who records the dying expressions of terror of his women victims as he stabs them to death.

Working as a focus puller in a British film studio, he supplies a local porn shop with cheesecake photos and also dabbles in film-making. His project is a documentary on the effects of fear that obsesses him. With 16mm camera in hand, he accompanies a prostitute to her room and stabs her with a blade concealed in his tripod, photographing her contorted face in the throes of terror and death. Worryingly, certainly, Powell tries to make the killer understandable, maybe even sympathetic, a credible human being, not just another generic movie monster.

Troublingly, perhaps, Powell himself plays the killer’s sadistic scientist father, who conducted experiments in the psychology of terror on mark when he was a child. Young Mark Lewis is played by Powell’s real-life son, Columba Powell, and Mark’s mother, seen lying lifelessly in bed, is played by Columba’s real-life mother, Frankie Reidy.

Moira Shearer, star of Powell’s The Red Shoes, appears as murder victim Vivian, Brenda Bruce is another victim, Dora, and Anna Massey is Helen Stephens, with Shirley Anne Field as Pauline Shields.

Moira Shearer King, Lady Kennedy (17 January 1926 – 31 January 2006) was an internationally renowned Scottish ballet dancer but is best remembered for her performances in The Red Shoes and Peeping Tom.

Anna Raymond Massey CBE (11 August 1937 – 3 July 2011) was born in Thakeham, Sussex, England, daughter of actors Adrianne Allen and Raymond Massey. Her brother Daniel Massey was also an actor and her godfather was film director John Ford.

Nigel Davenport, who plays Det Sgt Miller, died on October 25 2013, aged 85.

Shirley Anne Field’s larger role in Michael Powell’s 1960 horror-thriller shocker Peeping Tom led to her breakthroughs that year in The Entertainer and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

RIP Shirley Anne Field, who died on 10 December 2023, at the age of 87.

Her first film appearance was as an extra in Simon and Laura (1955), followed by many small parts, but her first sizeable film role was in Horrors of the Black Museum (1959). She had minor parts in Once More, with Feeling! (1960) and And the Same to You (1960), then a larger role in Peeping Tom.

Her breakthrough came when Tony Richardson picked her to play beauty queen Tina Lapford in The Entertainer (1960). It led to her best known role as Doreen in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960).

Peeping Tom was released on 16 May 1960 in the UK, just a few weeks before Hitchcock’s shocker Psycho, which had its premiere in New York City on 16 June and opened in London on 4 August. These two movies prompted Britain’s premiere film critic Caroline Lejeune to throw in the towel, disgusted. Why is it that Hitchcock’s film career and reputation triumphed with Psycho and Powell’s collapsed after Peeping Tom?

The British Board of Film Censorship heavily cut the film by seven minutes for release and many scenes still have a crude, scrappy feel that spoils Powell’s original rhythm and flow, so we have to be slightly patient in judging it. BBFC cuts toned down the murders of Vivian and Dora, nude shots were deleted (including photos of naked women in the album), the suicide of the killer was shortened, and scenes featuring the spike were also edited. Some dialogue was also cut (hence the abrupt ending to the conversation between the cops in the car). Although some cuts were restored in video and DVD releases, the original uncut print is probably lost for ever.

The cameras in Mark Lewis’ room include Powell’s own first film camera, a hand operated Eyemo, made by Bell and Howell, which he won in a competition.

Screenwriter Leo Marks was a World War Two cryptographer and polymath.

The score is written by Brian Easdale and performed by Australian virtuoso Gordon Watson.

Cinematographer Otto Heller shoots in Eastmancolor.

Anna Massey was also terrorised in Hitchcock’s serial killer film Frenzy.

In February 2013 it was reported that the Austrian actor Karlheinz Böhm was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. He lived in Grödig near Salzburg until his death on 29 May 2014, aged 86. Apart from his creepy role in Peeping Tom, he is well remembered for his contrasting romantic role as Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria in the hugely popular and much loved trio of Sissi films (1955, 1956, 1957) with Romy Schneider as Princess Elizabeth of Austria.

Karlheinz Böhm with Romy Schneider.

The cast are Carl Boehm [Karlheinz Böhm] as Mark Lewis, Anna Massey as Helen Stephens, Moira Shearer as Vivian, Maxine Audley as Mrs Stephens, Brenda Bruce as Dora, Miles Malleson as elderly gentleman customer, Esmond Knight as Arthur Baden, Martin Miller as Dr Rosan, Michael Goodliffe as Don Jarvis, Jack Watson as Chief Insp Gregg, Nigel Davenport as Det Sgt Miller, Shirley Anne Field as Pauline Shields [Diane Ashley?], Pamela Green as the model Milly, Michael Powell as A N Lewis, Columba Powell as Young Mark Lewis, John Barrard as Small Man, Cornelia Frances as girl in sports car leaving studio, Susan Travers as the model Lorraine, Bartlett Mullins, Brian Wallace, Maurice Durant, Brian Worth, Veronica Hurst, Alan Rolfe, John Dunbar, Peggy Thorpe-Bates, Roland Curram, Keith Baxter, and Peter Murray.

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