- Language English
- Classification: 18
- Studio: Warner
- VHS Release Date: 26 Feb 1996
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
- ASIN: B00004CJPH
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,589 in Video (See Top 100 in Video)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Michael Powell lays bare the cinema's dark voyeuristic underside in this disturbing 1960 psychodrama thriller. Handsome young Carl Boehm is Mark Lewis, a shy, socially clumsy young man shaped by the psychic scars of an emotionally abusive parent, in this case a psychologist father (the director in a perverse cameo) who subjected his son to nightmarish experiments in fear and recorded every interaction with a movie camera. Now Mark continues his father's work, sadistically killing young women with a phallic-like blade attached to his movie camera and filming their final, terrified moments for his definitive documentary on fear. Set in contemporary London, which Powell evokes in a lush, colourful seediness, this film presents Mark as much victim as villain and implicates the audience in his scopophilic activities as we become the spectators to his snuff film screenings. Comparisons to Hitchcock's Psycho, released the same year, are inevitable. Powell's film was reviled upon release, and it practically destroyed his career, ironic in light of the acclaim and success that greeted Psycho, but Powell's picture hit a little too close to home with its urban setting, full colour photography, documentary techniques and especially its uneasy connections between sex, violence and the cinema. We can thank Martin Scorsese for sponsoring its 1979 re-release, which presented the complete, uncut version to appreciative audiences for the first time. This powerfully perverse film was years ahead of its time and remains one of the most disturbing and psychologically complex horror films ever made. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase
This Criterion Collection edition of Peeping Tom is perfect quality, and the film is shocking even by today's standards. The subtext of how film and pornography is actually made works well, as we get to know a solitary male who secretly films women. He also kills them. I disagree with other reviewers here who suggest that there is something disturbed about the creative team behind the product. Was Shakespeare disturbed when he created Macbeth?
The appalling truth which this movie seeks to engage with is that there are disgusting element in everyone's sexuality. We all treat others as objects and behave like dolls, whether it is in our response to sexually styled advertising when we buy things, or in our own relationships. The film disturbs us because it reveals a spectrum of questionable sexual behaviour with the main character at an extreme of voyeurism and murder.
The curious mix of guilt and innocence in the central performance are what make the film so effective. There is nothing else like it and it does conjur up the seedy world of the 1960s, before pornography became something that intruded into daily internet experience and perfume advertising.
The appalling truth which this movie seeks to engage with is that there are disgusting element in everyone's sexuality. We all treat others as objects and behave like dolls, whether it is in our response to sexually styled advertising when we buy things, or in our own relationships. The film disturbs us because it reveals a spectrum of questionable sexual behaviour with the main character at an extreme of voyeurism and murder.
The curious mix of guilt and innocence in the central performance are what make the film so effective. There is nothing else like it and it does conjur up the seedy world of the 1960s, before pornography became something that intruded into daily internet experience and perfume advertising.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:VHS Tape
I enjoyed the modesty of this film, and the complexity of the portrayal of the human mind. The film debated what drives someone to go to the cinema to watch murder, sex and violence? A very brave film for its time, it threw back questions that the audience weren't ready to be answered. Definately a head of its time, caused much contraversy (according to my film lecturer)! A must see if you prefer a film, which will make you think, rather than bombard you with gore!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Blu-ray|Amazon Verified Purchase
Peeping Tom, as well as Michael Powell's talent, never looked so great.
A fantastic edition, which perfectly fits in the previous BD edition of other Powell's movies.
Hope more of his masterpieces will come out soon (Matter of LIfe and Death - Colonel Blimp . etc..)
A fantastic edition, which perfectly fits in the previous BD edition of other Powell's movies.
Hope more of his masterpieces will come out soon (Matter of LIfe and Death - Colonel Blimp . etc..)
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Peeping Tom Special Edition Blue Ray DVD
This DVD was purchased for someone else as a Christmas present so I have not seen it to carry out a review. Product delivered within the stated timescale.
Published 3 months ago by Minuteman
Time capsule
21st century cinema goers aren't especially shocked by films which depict serial killers venturing into the seedier realms of society to look for their victims. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Dariush Alavi
Not a DNR mess
Before criticizing may I suggest that you actually learn a bit more about what DNR means, and why this release isn't as filtered as some "reviewers" suggest. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Dr. Svet Atanasov
Great new version of this creepy cult movie
If you have never seen this before, be warned it still shocks despite being 50 years old.
Not that you would know from looking at the excellent transfer of the film on blu... Read more
Not that you would know from looking at the excellent transfer of the film on blu... Read more
Published 18 months ago by lottigee
Stunning quality release.
Mainly I agree with the other review, the picture and sound quality are phenomenal for this unfairly maligned horror classic. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Mr. K. Arts
peeping tom bluray
.A very strong transfer and newly restored . Fine object detail is first class and contrast levels consistent throughtout . Read more
Published 18 months ago by martyn cros
Fear - Shock - Terror!
This is a strange movie about a man who was filmed constantly as a child and as he grew up by his father. Read more
Published on 18 Sep 2008 by FAMOUS NAME
Michael Powell crosses over the line with "Peeping Tom"
"Peeping Tom" is a film whose place in cinematic history cannot help but outweigh the critical value of the film itself. Read more
Published on 29 Dec 2003 by Lawrance M. Bernabo
A complex masterpiece
Peeping Tom is definately NOT ahead of it's time because (in my opinion)at the moment the world is being exposed to so much sex in relations to the media e.g. Read more
Published on 12 Dec 2003
A creepy look into an insane mind.
I will be honest now. I am a gorehound, and I love films with a notorious background. Don't know what that says about my mental state, but who cares. Read more
Published on 1 April 2002 by L. Andrews
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