We are reviewing a movie from the 1960’s today! You know how I feel about that.

I had actually mentioned today’s film in that above linked article. It has been a long time coming for my finally getting around to Peeping Tom, but here we are.

Peeping Tom, I had been told, is one of those movies that gets referenced a lot when people are discussing the origins of the slasher sub-genre of horror films. The question “What was the first Slasher flick” doesn’t really have a correct answer (with Halloween, Black Christmas, and Psycho just some of the options you will quoted, among many others), but I’ve seen Peeping Tom bandied about by some folks as a response.

And I love me a slasher, so how could I keep going in life without giving this movie a go?

I will say this: do I, now that I’ve watched it, see Peeping Tom as a slasher movie? I do not. It’s a little too focused on the killer, the killer is straight-up our protagonist, and there are no mystery or supernatural elements in play. It’s not particularly brutal or violent. And there really isn’t a cast of characters playing victim to the maniac. I can see SOME ties to the genre here–stabbing! The victims die by stabbing; a creative killing weapon–but by and large, I don’t buy this as a slasher. But it could have been an inspiration for those subsequent films!

Peeping Tom focuses on Mark, a loner who enjoys video recording things and has taken his hobby to the lengths of taping his victims’ final moments as he murders them. He lives in a large apartment building, and downstairs from him is Helen. One night, she is throwing a party for her 21st birthday when Mark comes home, and she takes something of a shine to him. Even as he shows her creepy videos his own dad took of him, she still finds herself enamored of him.

As the two grow closer, Mark makes a vow to himself to never harm or record Helen. And he even sets about curing his own anti-social behaviors. Will Mark get over his dark desires? Can he and Helen live the life together they both want?

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ Karlheinz Bohm is an interesting study as Mark, both in the way he is written and the way Bohm portrays him. Screenplay-wise, it’s interesting to see a serial killer movie/story where the killer does not want to be a killer. It’s a compulsion that Mark has, and he’s actively seeking to get out from under it. That’s quite the twist on the formula, especially for a movie this old. You never see Jason Voorhees going to therapy because he kills people!

As a performance, Mark is both chillingly sociopathic and yet somehow empathetic. You find yourself rooting for him to fend off his demons because in is best moments, he seems like a good guy. In his worst moments, he is killing people, sure, but ignore those! Or don’t, because it’s Bohm’s amazing ability to flip a switch and go from pleasant to menacing like it’s nothing.

+ The movie is shot very well, and there are slight aspects that are kind of like a proto found footage film. It’s very well made, and that’s high praise from me for a 1960’s movie since I have my weird biases. It feels, at times, like we the viewers are privy to things we should not be able to be seeing, and that’s a credit to Michael Powell’s direction. 

There are great shots late where the camera is closer in on Mark as the police are closing in on him, creating a feeling of claustrophobia. There are point of view shots that put you right into the victim’s or Mark’s shoes as he commits his terrible crimes. Powell really knew how to heighten the emotions he wanted to create in the viewer, and he does it masterfully.

– Peeping Tom drags in parts, and it is far from gripping material for its entire duration. It’s probably overlong for its screenplay and plot, which says a lot given that the film isn’t even 90 minutes long. But perhaps this would have worked better as a short picture than a feature length one.

The second act is particularly tedious, and there were chunks of the movie I just didn’t care for and couldn’t get into. I’m not saying every horror movie needs to be overflowing with murder and death, but Peeping Tom comes to repeated complete stops to focus on Mark and Helen’s getting to know each other. And these moments didn’t all work for me.

– Helen’s mother Vivian is a strange character. The kind of sage blind character who somehow senses what others can’t or won’t see, she is a throwback portrayal. She immediately suspects Mark is up to no good and is relentlessly suspicious of him until he and she finally come face to face for a confrontation. It just feels like she is unnecessary to the story and isn’t hyper realistic as a character. 

To the movie’s credit, she has a great climactic face-off with Mark. That scene is full of tension. So I wouldn’t say she should be written out entirely. But she just felt like an odd spectacle of a character to me.

OVERALL

Whereas I didn’t LOVE Peeping Tom because it slowed to a crawl too often, I did LIKE it quite a bit. Do I see slasher origins to this one? At least the beginnings of such? Maybe not so much as I was hoping. But I liked the 1960’s sensitivities that it carried, and Bohm and Powell do spectacular work making the film powerful in its best moments.