Peeping Tom is a 1960 British psychological horror-thriller film[4] directed by Michael Powell, written by Leo Marks, and starring Carl Boehm, Moira Shearer, Anna Massey and Maxine Audley.

The film's controversial subject matter and its extremely harsh reception by critics had a severely negative impact on Powell's career as a director in the United Kingdom.

Shown from the point of view of the camera viewfinder, he follows her into her flat, murders her with a blade concealed in one leg of his tripod, and later watches the film in his darkroom.

Helen Stephens, a sweet-natured young woman who lives with her blind mother in the flat below his, befriends him out of curiosity after he is discovered spying on her 21st birthday party.

Mark arranges with Vivian, a stand-in at the studio, to make a film after the set is closed; he then kills her and stuffs her into a prop trunk.

Unable to wait until she leaves due to his compulsion, he begins screening his latest snuff film with her still in the room.

Peeping Tom has been praised for its psychological complexity,[12] which incorporates the "self-reflexive camera" as a plot device, as well as the themes of child abuse, sadomasochism, and scopophilic fetishism.

[14] According to Paul Wells, the film deals with the anxieties of British culture in regarding sexual repression, patriarchal obsession, voyeuristic pleasure and perverse violence.

[15] In the opinion of Peter Keough, the death scenes of the film would provide a field day to Freudian psychoanalysis and deconstructionists.

Cinema here is equated to sexual aggression and a death wish, the camera to the phallus, photography to violation, and film to ritualized voyeurism.

In a memorable sequence, an attractive, semi-nude female character turns to the camera and reveals a disfiguring facial scar.

He is also the victim of his father's studies in the phenomenon of fear in children, a human guinea pig subjected to sadistic experiments.

However, despite containing material similar to Peeping Tom, Psycho became a box-office success and only increased the popularity and fame of its director (although the film was widely criticised in the English press).

A variant of Peeping Tom's main conceit, The Blind Man, was one of Hitchcock's unproduced films around this time.

[18] Additionally, Marks stated he was inspired to write a horror story and to become a codebreaker after reading "The Gold-Bug" by American writer Edgar Allan Poe.

[18] Prior to writing the screenplay for Peeping Tom, Marks, a polymath, had worked as cryptographer during World War II.

[18] Cohen originally wanted a star to play the lead role and suggested Dirk Bogarde, but the Rank Organisation, who had him under contract, refused to loan him out.

Laurence Harvey was attached for a while but pulled out during pre-production and Powell ended up casting German-Austrian actor Karlheinz Böhm (billed as Carl Boehm).

[22] Pamela Green, then a well-known glamour model in London, was cast in the role of Milly, one of Lewis's victims, who appears nude onscreen in the moments leading up to her murder scene.

[29] When Peeping Tom was first released in Italy in 1960, the Committee for the Theatrical Review of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities rated it as VM16: not suitable for children under 16.

The reason for the age restriction, cited in the official documents, is: the storyline is shocking and several scenes are not suitable for minors.

[30][better source needed] In order for the film to be screened publicly, the Committee imposed the removal of two scenes taking place in the photographer's studio, in particular, those in which Milly is shown alone, fully dressed and half-undressed, in front of the mirror, in addition to two other scenes showing a woman lying on the bed excessively half-undressed.

[41] Kinematograph Weekly reported in April 1960 that "Most of the national critics were not enamoured with the subject matter of Peeping Tom and while I would agree that it is not everybody's cup of tea, it is a powerfully gripping, well-produced picture and I do not think there can be any doubt that it will do very well as an X certificate booking.

"[42] Derek Hill, reviewer of Tribune magazine suggested that "the only really satisfactory way to dispose of Peeping Tom would be to shovel it up and flush it swiftly down the nearest sewer".

[43] Len Mosley, writing for the Daily Express, said that the film was more nauseating and depressing than the leper colonies of East Pakistan, the back streets of Bombay, and the gutters of Calcutta.

Kinematograph Weekly reported in June 1960: One section of the press has got hot under the collar because adverse quotes from reviews on " Peeping Tom " (Anglo Amalgamated—British) are being exploited at the Gala Royal, Edgware Road, where the thriller is making a second West End appearance.

[9] Kinematograph Weekly reported in June 1960 that the film "got rough treatment from the long-haired boys and girls [critics] but it's clicking [at the box office].

[52] Vincent Canby wrote of the film in The New York Times in 1979: When Michael Powell's Peeping Tom was originally released in England, in 1960, the critics rose up like a bunch of furious Reverend Davidsons to condemn it on moral grounds.

Only someone madly obsessed with being the first to hail a new auteur, which is always a nice way of calling attention to oneself, could spend the time needed to find genius in the erratic works of Mr.

The website's critics consensus reads, "Peeping Tom is a chilling, methodical look at the psychology of a killer, and a classic work of voyeuristic cinema.