Peeping Tom (1960)
- Starring:
- Karl Heinz Böhm, Moira Shearer, (more)
- Director(s):
- Michael Powell
- Category:
- Mystery & Suspense, Foreign
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Michael Powell's controversial meditation on violence and voyeurism effectively destroyed his career when it was first released, but later generations have come to regard it as a masterpiece. Karl Heinz Boehm stars as Mark, the son of a psychologist who kept a video journal of the boy's upbringing for research purposes. The constant intrusions profoundly affected the boy, who grew up to be a photographer himself; but his principal subject matter consists of women whom he murders before the camera. He then runs the films of his victims in their final throes so that he can study their reactions to death--a perverse extension of his father's experiments, which tormented Mark to analyze his reactions to raw fear. The British press had long been hostile to the unorthodox films of Powell and his partner Emeric Pressburger; when Peeping Tom came around, they used the film to castigate him as "sick" and tawdry. The passage of time has proven Peeping Tom as profound and accomplished as any of Powell's earlier films, and it ranks with Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo (1958) as a landmark exploration of the links among voyeurism, violence, and male sexual desire. Powell himself plays the evil father in the flashback sequences, and his son Colomba plays Mark as a child. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Theatrical Feature Running Time:
- 101 mins
Complete Cast:
- Karl Heinz Böhm - Mark Lewis
- Anna Massey - Helen Stephens
- Shirley Ann Field - Diane Ashley
- Jack Watson - Inspector Gregg
- Michael Goodliffe - Don Jarvis
- Martin Miller - Dr. Rosan
- Nigel Davenport - Sgt. Miller
- Brian Worth - Assistant Director
- Miles Malleson - Elderly Gentleman
- John Chappell - Clapper Boy
- John Dunbar - Police Doctor
- Peggy Thorp-Bates - Mrs Partridge
- Roland Curram - Young Man Extra
- Moira Shearer - Vivian
- Maxine Audley - Mrs. Stephens
- Esmond Knight - Arthur Baden
- Bartlett Mullins - Mr. Peters
- Brenda Bruce - Dora
- Pamela Green - Millie
- Susan Travers - Lorraine
- Veronica Hurst - Miss Simpson
- Keith Baxter - Baxter
- John Barrard - Small Man
- Michael Powell - Mark's Father
- Guy Kingsley Poynter - P. Tate the Cameraman
- Director(s):
- Michael Powell
- Writer(s):
- Leo Marks
- Producer(s):
- Michael Powell
- Categories:
- Mystery & Suspense, Foreign
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- Subtitles:
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