Peeping Tom
1960, NR, 101 min.
D: Michael Powell; with Carl Boehm, Moira Shearer, Anna Massey.

This abundantly creepy, and always controversial, British movie never goes out of style. Intelligently directed by Michael Powell (The Red Shoes), the director also plays a key role in the movie as the peeping Tom’s father. He uses his son in his experiments on fear, and the boy grows up to be a psychopathic killer. A cameraman for the movies by trade, this killer’s fetish has to do with photographing the fear in his victims’ faces at the moment of their death. Some of the means by which he does this are mighty ingenious. Of course, the story also allows for many levels of observation on the subject of voyeurism, which may go a long way toward explaining its popularity among film buffs.

This article appears in January 21 • 2000.

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Marjorie Baumgarten is a film critic and contributing writer at The Austin Chronicle, where she has worked in many capacities since the paper's founding in 1981. She served as the Chronicle's Film Reviews editor for 25 years.