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Peeping Tom - Criterion Collection

Peeping Tom - Criterion Collection

List Price: $39.95
Your Price: $35.96
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Nicely err...Framed Horror!
Review: I have read many reviews comparing Peeping Tom to Psycho. I personally found this comparison to be ridiculous. I liked Peeping Tom quite a bit, and I found Karl Bohm's character of Mark to be quite fascinating & sad. I think that Anna Massey(Seen years later in Hitchcock's FRENZY)lights up the screen here, as the girl interested in the introverted Mark. This film has many wonderful camera angles, as can be expected from a film about a psychopathic photographer. This is a wonderfully creepy, disturbing film, which in my opinion is more character study, than horror, but it is really both. Several disturbing scenes, but there is no blood in this film. (As opposed to the quite bloody shower scene in Psycho)Michael Powell did a nice job on this film. He inserted all sorts of quirky things into Peeping Tom. Criterion has done a nice job with this DVD, including a beautiful anamorphic transfer. I liked the documentary 'A Very British Psycho'. Lots of information here, however, I would like to have seen a bit more about why critics trashed this film, newpaper clippings, etc. This is a Cult film definately not to be missed.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: "Watch Out! Watch Out!"
Review: A voice-over in the original trailer included on the DVD urgently shouts out the above message. See the trailer before the film and you'll be hooked. If you have never seen Peeping Tom you're in for a very pleasant surprise. This is a "cult" film that fully lives up to its reputation. It is an exciting, well-acted, expertly filmed masterpiece. Admirers of Hitchcock, especially of his "Psycho" (released later the same year, 1960) will find many points of comparison.

At the risk of seeming overly enthusiastic, I will say that the Criterion DVD issue of Peeping Tom is one of the finest, most satisfying video issues I have ever come across. Every aspect of this release is absolutely top-drawer. The film transfer is beautifully clear and looks almost new. In terms of audio the disc is also quite impressive with none of the tinny quality that some older films have. As for extras, this release is a total knockout: the audio commentary by critic Laura Mulvey is detailed and easy to follow; the 50-minute documentary "A Very British Psycho" is so fascinating it can't really be summed up here; and the original British trailer is a really worthwhile bonus. "Peeping Tom" should be required viewing for all interested in the possibilities of this art form.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: DVD extras add depth to great film
Review: I want to add my kudos to Criterion for creating a great presentation of a very memorable and provocative film. When I saw it in the theater a few years ago, I knew I could never forget it. Being familiar with Powell's other films such as The Red Shoes, I Know Where I'm Going, and The Life and Times of Colonel Blimp among others, does not prepare you for what you are going to see. Thanks to the commentary track by Laura Mulvey and the documentary about Leo Marks included by Criterion, I fully appreciate the subtlety and intellectual depth contained in this film. By all means, do not let your misgivings about the subject matter of Peeping Tom prevent you from checking out this exemplary DVD.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Disturbing Psychological Horror
Review: This wonderfully creepy 1960 horror film predates Psycho by about 3 months and predates the "slasher" film by about 16 years and, in braving new ground which deviated from the Gothic Horror film movement spawned by Hammer Films in 1957, helped move horror from the Gothic castles to the house next door.Michael Powell's film presents us with a young man who is so fascinated by the subject of fear, that he stalks young women and kills them while filming their deaths with his movie camera. In to the young man's world, comes a young woman who only wants to understand him and love him, but will she find out his horrible secret before its too late?While lambasted by critics who condemend the film for being "The sickets and filthiest film I can remember seeing . . .", Peeping Tom in one of the most interesting horror films of the early 60s. It was the critical attacks against the film and Powell himself which prompted Hitchcock not to have a critics screening for his new film about a killer, "Psycho", which premiered a few months later.This Criterion release has all the thrills of the laser disk release (trailers, audio commentary, still gallery) plus a wonderful BBC documentary on the making of Peeping Tom called "A Very British Psycho".A fine presention of a classicly disturbing film. WELL DONE !

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Almost excellent DVD - except for the wrong aspect ratio
Review: When I heard of the Peeping Tom DVD release from Criterion this sounded like the best thing that could happen to this great movie, one of my all-time favorites... Now that I've seen it: The documentary on the disc is excellent, and Criterions work on the image is almost brilliant as always, except for one thing:

Why, oh why Criterion, did you have to mess with the aspect ratio of this film? The original format is the old european widescreen ratio 1:1.66, the (anamorphic) transfer on the DVD now shows a cropped 1:1,78 that doesn't look quite right in some scenes. Please, please, please Criterion, don't do this kind of things again, you did, you can and you should do better.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Peeping Tom a psychological masterpiece!
Review: I am an avid horror/thriller movie fan, and I just saw Peeping Tom for the very first time today. I think it is a brilliant psychological thriller. It is up there with Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. Mark is a great character. I sympathised for him at the same time as deploring his actions. I think Peeping Tom was very well ploted, acted, directed and scripted.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Competent, But a Tad Lame
Review: After reading a lot about this film, I couldn't wait to see it. I was very disappointed.

The scenes where the main character's father tries to scare him during his childhood are VERY weak, and the overall question I was left with was "What was all the fuss about this movie?"

It's not a BAD film by any means, which is why I gave it a 3-star rating, but I don't think it's the "masterpiece" that I've been reading about all these years.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent Criterion DVD
Review: Criterion has done a beautiful job bringing their Peepin Tom laserdisc to DVD. The transfer is pristine and enhanced for widescreen TVs. The commentary is very insightful, and the first rate documentary runs almost an hour long. All this on one dual layered disc. Fans of the movie or even just Michael Powell, in general, must check this out.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Over-heated, Over-praised, God-Awful
Review: I saw this film yesterday. I had heard and read many things about this film, and was expecting something truly special, a real edge-of-the-seat thriller. Instead I got a boringly inept load of trash, from no less an artist than Michael Powell. It is a cavalcade of cliches, each more hackneyed than the last. The Freudian phallic symbolism is so overdone that it becomes comic, like something in a first-year film student festival. Watching Karl Boehm loving stroke the lenses of his camera, and lift one leg of his tripod, I was moved more to roll my eyes in dismay than shudder with fear. True, there is one disturbing scene, involving a blind woman (I won't spoil it). But that's it. Powell was essentially a fabulist. His best films (The Red Shoes, The Thief of Bagdad, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp) are glorious fairy tales, each with sequences far more frightening than anything in Peeping Tom. When he tries to depict any kind of reality, he falters, and with Peeping Tom, he falls flat on his face.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Better the Hitch?
Review: Cinema as it should be. Few films leave such an impression


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