Peeping Tom

"A Masterpiece" Dilys Powell, The Sunday Times From Michael Powell, the brilliant and acclaimed director of A Matter Of Life And Death and Black Narcissus, comes a controversal masterpiece now recognised as one of the surpreme achievements of British horror cinema. By day, clean cut Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) is a focus-puller at a film studio, supplementing his wages by taking girlie pictures above a seedy newsagent. By night he is a sadistic killer, stalking his victims, camera in hand, in an obsessive quest for the look of pure, unadulterated fear. Anna Massey, Moria Shearer and Maxine Audley also star. On it's release in 1960, Peeping Tom proved to be far more than British critics could handle; their fearsome reaction ruined Powell's career. It's stylish, cunning and brutally frank treatment of Mark Lewis' insanity brought forth comments such as "The sickest and filthiest film I can remember seeing" (The Spectator), "Frankly Beastly" (Financial Times), and "Throughly nasty" (Daily Mail). Unavailable for many years, Peeping Tom was, through the efforts of film lovers includng Martin Scorcese, at long last acknowledged as a cinematic master-work, and the reputation of it's malinged director restored.