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So many movies ... so little time ...
Lo and behold ... it was on this day in the United Kingdom all the way back in the year 1960 in which the good people of London were treated to an exclusive theatrical premiere engagement when Peeping Tom thrilled and chilled watchers on the silver screen.
Directed by Michael Powell from a story by Leo Marks, the Slasher/Horror starred Karlheinz Böhm, Anna Massey, Moira Shearer, Maxine Audley, Miles Malleson, Esmond Knight, Martin Miller, Michael Goodliffe, Jack Watson, and more. According to our friends at IMDB.com, here's the plot summary:
"Mark Lewis, works as a focus puller in a British film studio. On his off hours, he supplies a local porno shop with cheesecake photos and also dabbles in filmmaking. A lonely, unfriendly, sexually repressed fellow, Mark is obsessed with the effects of fear and how they are registered on the face and behavior of the frightened. This obsession dates from the time when, as a child, he served as the subject of some cold-blooded experiments in terror conducted by his own scientist father. As a grown man, Mark becomes a compulsive murderer who kills women and records their contorted features and dying gasps on film. His ongoing project is a documentary on fear. With 16mm camera in hand, he accompanies a prostitute to her room and stabs her with a blade concealed in his tripod, all the while photographing her contorted face in the throes of terror and death. Alone in his room, he surrounds himself with the sights and sounds of terror: taped screams, black-and-white "home movies" of convulsed faces. At his house, he meets Helen Stephens, a young woman who lives with her blind mother in a downstairs flat. She visits his flat, where he shows her black-and-white films that were taken of him when he was a child. She is horrified to see that his father used him as a guinea pig in various experiments, taking movies of his reactions of fear."
In all honesty, I'd never even heard of this film until I happened across it in a bit of research. According to some of what I've read, the story essentially hamstrung an otherwise fairly storied professional career of director Michael Powell, pretty much getting the fellow kinda/sorta blacklisted from the industry owed to the picture's "depiction of violence and its lurid sexual content" (per Google.com search). The flick is, largely, considered a box office flop; but I've also read that it's credited with 'inventing' the whole Slasher sub-genre of Horror. I guess if you're going to go down in history, then let's make it a big one, am I right?
As tends to happen over time when a picture is a bit misunderstood in its infancy, Peeping Tom has gone on to develop a somewhat revered reputation. A review on the popular website Rotten Tomatoes even states that the feature is a "landmark in voyeuristic cinema."
-- EZ
Lo and behold ... it was on this day in the United Kingdom all the way back in the year 1960 in which the good people of London were treated to an exclusive theatrical premiere engagement when Peeping Tom thrilled and chilled watchers on the silver screen.
Directed by Michael Powell from a story by Leo Marks, the Slasher/Horror starred Karlheinz Böhm, Anna Massey, Moira Shearer, Maxine Audley, Miles Malleson, Esmond Knight, Martin Miller, Michael Goodliffe, Jack Watson, and more. According to our friends at IMDB.com, here's the plot summary:
"Mark Lewis, works as a focus puller in a British film studio. On his off hours, he supplies a local porno shop with cheesecake photos and also dabbles in filmmaking. A lonely, unfriendly, sexually repressed fellow, Mark is obsessed with the effects of fear and how they are registered on the face and behavior of the frightened. This obsession dates from the time when, as a child, he served as the subject of some cold-blooded experiments in terror conducted by his own scientist father. As a grown man, Mark becomes a compulsive murderer who kills women and records their contorted features and dying gasps on film. His ongoing project is a documentary on fear. With 16mm camera in hand, he accompanies a prostitute to her room and stabs her with a blade concealed in his tripod, all the while photographing her contorted face in the throes of terror and death. Alone in his room, he surrounds himself with the sights and sounds of terror: taped screams, black-and-white "home movies" of convulsed faces. At his house, he meets Helen Stephens, a young woman who lives with her blind mother in a downstairs flat. She visits his flat, where he shows her black-and-white films that were taken of him when he was a child. She is horrified to see that his father used him as a guinea pig in various experiments, taking movies of his reactions of fear."
In all honesty, I'd never even heard of this film until I happened across it in a bit of research. According to some of what I've read, the story essentially hamstrung an otherwise fairly storied professional career of director Michael Powell, pretty much getting the fellow kinda/sorta blacklisted from the industry owed to the picture's "depiction of violence and its lurid sexual content" (per Google.com search). The flick is, largely, considered a box office flop; but I've also read that it's credited with 'inventing' the whole Slasher sub-genre of Horror. I guess if you're going to go down in history, then let's make it a big one, am I right?
As tends to happen over time when a picture is a bit misunderstood in its infancy, Peeping Tom has gone on to develop a somewhat revered reputation. A review on the popular website Rotten Tomatoes even states that the feature is a "landmark in voyeuristic cinema."
-- EZ
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