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| Released: |
1959 |
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| Genre: |
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| Origin: |
GB |
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| Colour: |
C |
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| Length: |
109 |
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PRO Reviews
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| | | Mr Michael Powell, who produces with the finesse one expects of him, works all this up into a sufficiently nasty climax; earlier horrors, one feels as they arrive, are curiously muted but their quietness allows a hard turn of the screw at the end, and the encounter between Maxine Audley, the blind mother, and Mr Curt Boehm in the film's centre reminds us that Mr Powell is a director who knows where he is going; if he makes a thriller, it will thrill. | | | | | (Times) | | | Is the film as disgusting as the British critics found it? Yes, but it is also very moving, a case study that could have been simply sadistic but emerges (especially because of the Boehm performance) as a tragic record of a destroyed life. Perhaps that's why Peeping Tom was so disturbing to its first viewers. It is not distanced into "entertainment" like Psycho, but remains unforgivingly as the story of horrible crimes seen straight on. | | | | | (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, long after release) | | | A remarkable examination of the psychology of film-making and film viewing, and one of the most disturbing films ever made. | | | | | (Virgin Film Guide, 2003) | | | Although pathological case histories lie outside the province and proper spectrum of the pure horror film... Peeping Tom almost bridges the gap, concerned as it is not so much with terror as with the face of terror...[and] may well represent one of the few truly Sadian films, as opposed to merely sadistic... Powell brought an elaborate technique to the realization of Peeping tom: fanciful use of color filter, black-and-white films within the film, hand-held camera scenes from the vantage point of the first-person, etc... [It] was heavily censored in most countries... Critics and censors, united for once, seemed to find the display of terror more deplorable than actual blood-spilling. | | | | | (Carlos Clarens, An Illustrated History of the Horror Film, 1967) | | | | Michael Powell's remarkable film... was derived in certain respects from de Sade and anticipated in others the kind of appalling sadistic experiments revealed in the Moors case of 1966. | | | | | (Roger Manvell, New Cinema in Britain, 1969) | | | | Perhaps the most notorious British film ever: a startling treatment of voyeurism and the mechanics of cinema, wrapped in the clothes of a lurid psychological thriller. Director Michael Powell once called it, a very tender film, a very nice one; hardly, but its fiendish skill and garish imagery haunt the mind long after well-bred films are forgotten. | | | | | (Geoff Brown, Radio Times, 1983) | | | | Arguably the most genuinely shocking British film ever made ... reflects Powell's obsession with the nature and form of film ... His distinctive use of colour and lighting and the constantly shifting visual surface of the film make it the most stylistically radical of his works, and easily the most controversial. | | | | | (Allan Hunter & Kenny Mathieson, Movie Classics, 1992) | | | | Michael Powell has long been known as one of this country’s most distinguished film-makers. But when, in 1960, he made a horror film, I hated the piece and, together with a great many other British critics, said so. Today, I find I am convinced that it is a masterpiece. If in some afterlife conversation is permitted, I shall think it my duty to seek out Michael Powell and apologise. Something more than a change of taste must exist... With so gifted a director this can hardly be anything but a frightening movie, but its object is the examination of emotion and not titillation. Interesting that it should be revived now when there had been much concern about the influence of cinema. All the more reason to distinguish between the serious and the merely sensational horror. Reading now what I wrote in 1960 I find that, despite my efforts to express revulsion, nearly everything I said conceals the extraordinary quality of Peeping Tom . See it, and spare a moment to respect the camerawork of Otto Heller. | | | | | (Dilys Powell, Sunday Times, 1994) | | | It is impossible to forgive the prurience and blindness with which the critics (with the exception of Ian Johnson in Motion and Jean-Paul Torok in Positif) condemned what is undoubtedly a masterpiece. But even now Peeping Tom is a very disturbing filmn, only acceptable perhaps because Michael Powell is acknowledged as a film-maker of great integrity as well as dazzling ability. | | | | | (Robert Murphy, Sixties British Cinema, 1992) | |
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, Moira Shearer 
, Anna Massey 
