Rating: 
Summary: o.k. i guess you should get it for your collection if:
Review: you are a true fan of film. i guess you can call this a classic, only because of it's age.this is not a horror film. it can't be compared to psycho or any other 'disturbed child going mad" type movie. it is however a decent story that could have been much more. it's about some uber-accented german freak who captures everything on film, because his father used to film him as part of childhood studies. big friggin' deal. get over it. now the guy can't form any true relationships and ends up killing people. wah wah. like i said...if you are a true film collector then you can shell out the large amounts of duckets that criterion collections go for (because of extras-who cares). rent it before you decide to buy.
Rating: 
Summary: A dark reflection of Michael Powell himself?
Review: This film is much debated among British Film enthusiasts, mainly because there's so much in it. There is a surface story about a shy young man who happens to be a serial killer, and beneath this there is a story of a voyeur, someone whose camera peeps where it isn't supposed to, someone whose father abused him in some way, and someone who uses his tripod to kill. This works on more than one level. It isn't just Mark who is peeping, it is also Powell himself, taking his camera into ladies' bedchambers and past canoodling couples...but hang on a minute, we the audience are also peeping aren't we? And doesn't his neighbour want to peep into his life, to see the private things that aren't on display? Doesn't her mother also want to stick her nose in? The film also shows London of the period to good effect. There are good performances all round, but Moira Shearer's portrait of terror stands out.
A very thought-provoking film, fascinating to watch, and very underrated.
Rating:
Summary: A solid and engaging minor classic.
Review: The most obvious point of reference for Michael Powell's "Peeping Tom" is Hitchcock's "Psycho", which was released just three months later. The two films are similarly themed, and both ushered in a new frankness in film making. However, whereas with "Psycho" one often gets the feeling that Hitchcock is somewhere behind the camera, laughing up his sleeve, Powell's "Peeping Tom" is played straight, and is much more meditative. It also has some subtle elements that the pranksterish Hitchcock deliberately eschewed in his film. "Peeping Tom" is made in the same, wonderful Eastman Color that Powell had been utilizing for much of his career, but its subject matter is far grittier than anything he'd made previously. The film explores the relationship between sex, violence and cinema with Karlheinz Bohm perfect in the role of the creepy, quietly-spoken wannabe director, who has inherited his twisted father's fascination with "fear". He is a natural voyeur; there's a superb moment when - without his camera for once - he spots a kissing couple on a street corner. He instantly stops to watch, reaching instinctively for his lens. Consumately directed by Powell (as ever) it is hardly surprising that Martin Scorsesse has championed this film, despite the waves of critical revulsion that greeted it in 1960. Quite simply put, it was ten years or more ahead of its time. There is no longer anything particularly shocking in this movie to contemporary audiences. We have seen much more gore, and much more sexuality since. We have seen the relationship between sex, violence and the cinema explored with even greater frankness (I think particularly of Polanski's "Repulsion"). But this is still a very fine film, with a sound psychological underpinning which stands up very well to modern scrutiny. For me, it threw it away a little in the last twenty minutes. And there are some bizarrely Gothic scenes between Bohm and his potential girlfriend's/saviour's mother. The old woman is blind, but yet is the only one who can see through our troubled anti-hero. This is a little too obvious for my tastes. And, at any rate, underdeveloped. However, that said, "Peeping Tom" is well worth anyone's attention. Not as jokey as "Psycho" (Hitchcock just thought the subject matter for his film was ridiculous), which has its benefits in the deeper explorations on offer here. It will certainly make you think about how you watch movies. Is there something of the voyeur in all of us?
Rating: 
Summary: Hold on to your knickers, this is a great film
Review: We learn from the documentary on the DVD, that when Michael Powell's Peeping Tom was released it was called the "sickest and filthiest film" and was pulled from the theatres in a week. From there it fell into obscurity. In viewing the film you understand the British critics of the time. The film cut the surface of British respectability and showed the decay underneath. The principal theme is disturbing even today. While reviewers like to trumpet this film as a predecessor to Psycho and the first 'slasher' film they are conveniently ignoring its text. If it was just a 'slasher' film it wouldn't have suffered the ignominy it did. Its themes go well beyond this simplistic rationalization and are a closer relation to the contemporary films 8mm and Thesis. Peeping Tom broke many taboo's of the time and probably tore the knickers off many a Londoner before it was pulled. It is a credit to the younger directors of the 1980's that this filmed was found, restored and is now appreciated for the masterpiece it is. Criterion has done a superb job with the original film and the extras add immensely to the appreciation of it. If you collect films that changed or created new directions in the industry, then this is one to own.
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Summary: The Ultimate In Movie Voyeurism.
Review: In a day and age where the importance of film in our society grows in leaps and bounds everyday, Michael Powell's devastating and completely unforgettable "Peeping Tom" levels the most convincing argument that we don't just watch films... we live them. The killer in "Peeping Tom" is a kind, shy, almost child-like man who, as the son of a scientist father forever obsessed with the fear of children, was tormented as a child. Many times his father would shine lights in the sleeping boy's eyes or drop lizards onto his bed in order to frighten the child, all the while recording his reactions on film. When the boy grows up, he carries on his father's work... maybe a little too well. He decides that the greatest fear experienced comes at the point of death. He conceals a knife in the tripod of his ever-present camera and films his victims as they slowly realize their fate. He also (in a move Hitchcock would envy) forces them to watch their own frightened faces with a small mirror attached to the front of the camera. He desires fear and he goes to extreme lengths to achieve it in his victims. The movie not only asks us to sympathize with the killer (played with a certain charm and yet an air of repellance by Carl Boehm) but also participate in his crimes. We see what he sees while filming them, while watching his footage at home, we are (very eerily) immersed into his film. We are right beside him, watching his victims and relishing in their terror. The camera the killer carries is more of an extension of himself then merely a way of recording what he sees. When his lovely neighbor kisses him, his face remains immobile, as if he doesn't quite know what's going on. But when she walks into the next room, he places his lips onto the lense of the camera and a look of pure passion crosses his face. When she is asking for his opinion on where she should place the pin he has given to her for a birthday present, his hands follow hers as if recording their movement. It is a film about film and about the experience of a moviegoer. Like Hitchcock's "Rear Window" it is a truly exhilarating and unnerving experience about sitting in a theater and not only watching what is going on, but living it. And loving it. No matter what is going on in front of your eyes. A classic.
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Summary: A brief history of the fear.
Review: The primary fear always has been one: the fear of having fear. The movie is a history of this awareness. We can remember how many times the cinema (as the books...) tries to scare the public by showing the terrified, shocked expressions of the characters which are watching some awful and menacing thing that are coming to them. Their look is more contagious than the advancing monster. This happens because we watch an already formed emotion, and it's hard to put ourselves in the situation shown by the movie, it's easier to put ourselves in the emotion of people like us. And if to put ourselves just in our emotion is easier too, what can it happen when we watch just our terror? The Mark's story tells all this, when child he was tormented by father, a scientist (but worst father and worst scientist) which had nice time in scaring him in every way. Even I have felt a bit sadist the innocent shootings made inside families: who is back the camera always has power, the others are always forced because taken: forced to be easy or to play , this is not important; however that chip of time and life is removed. Perhaps there is a true when somebody does not want to been taken or snapped, because he is in afraid that photograph can thieve the spirit. This movie is a very good film and shows a deep meditation about cinema and fear.
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Summary: Career Killing Mother of Slasher Films
Review: If Hitchcock's Psycho can be called the father of the modern slasher film, than PEEPING TOM must be the mother of them. Director Michael Powell (Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes) kissed his career goodbye when he made this still disturbing, denounced, and banned film about a psychotic serial killer (much like Tod Browning did when he made Freaks). Most of the film is told from the perspective of a disturbed serial killer and several murder scenes are shown from the perspective of the killer and these are the ones which upset people a great deal in 1960. The film has many thematically similar ideas to Hitchcock's Rear Window and voyeurism. This film however took ideas where no man had gone before and did so in color. It's still a sometimes surprisingly brutal film, though it's minimal gore is quite tame by today's standards. I'm sure there will be some who will call the film's mixture of psychological terror, voyuerism and mild gore dull. But these are people who need films to hit them over the head with images, loud noises, and be edited like an MTV music video. Christopher J. Jarmick, Author of The Glass Cocoon with Serena F. Holder...
Rating: 
Summary: Boooooooring!
Review: Too bad I can't give this movie something lower than one star, because it wasn't even worth that. I kept waiting for something to happen, to no avail. I have to give credit to the lead actor, who portrayed a tortured soul, but that wasn't enough to put any kind of "oomph" into this very slow-moving stinker.
Rating:
Summary: Peeping Tom: A Lost Classic
Review: Michael Powell's PEEPING TOM was tragically scorned by critics & movie-goers when it was originally released in 1960. This movie came out before Alfred Hitchcock's classic movie PSYCHO yet it did not recieve the acclaim that PSYCHO had. PEEPING TOM is an undiscovered gem that deserves its place among cinema's most outstanding achievements. It's a story of a young camera man who films the reactions of women as he is about to kill them. That way he can achieve s sense of sick, perverted sexual frenzy filming women as they die. Then he meets a girl who falls in love with him. He falls in love with her too, but will she fall into the same fate that has struck all the other women that have crossed his path? Intense, erotic, & suspenseful, PEEPING TOM is truly a gem of a movie. It must be seen & savored by horror & suspense fans & by students of the film genre everywhere.
Rating:
Summary: One of the classic thrillers
Review: A movie that art-film lovers would and should come back to time and time again. I'm so thankful that the Criterion people have secured the rights to PEEPING TOM, because prior to their involvement, no adequate VHS version has existed. Upon viewing, one can see why the relative conservative United Kingdom vehemently attacked the film when it was released. It is not an immoral, disgusting film as it has been characterized as... rather, it is a deeply disturbing look at the voyeuristic nature of film itself, which is probably why it has struck such an unpleasant chord in many film-lovers, as it questions the very medium of their enthusiasm. It is a splendidly made film which invites us into the mind of a very sympathetic, oddly charasmatic serial killer who has a penchant for filming the killings of his victims. Rather than a cold-blooded psychopath, he is a semi-gentle, shy man who has fallen victim to the lure of peeping and has taken it to an ultimate extreme. Martin Scorsese has asserted that no other movie has had such an overwhelming intellectual effect on his work... could you need a higher recommendation?
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