Peeping Tom

20th Century Fox

Other
1h 41m

Release Date: May 16, 1960 | Limited

95%
85%
7.6

A young man murders women, using a movie camera to film their dying expressions of terror.

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Director & Top Cast

Michael Powell
Director

Karlheinz Böhm
Mark Lewis

Anna Massey
Helen Stephens

Moira Shearer
Vivian

Maxine Audley
Mrs. Stephens

Brenda Bruce
Dora

Miles Malleson

Elderly Gentleman Customer

Esmond Knight

Arthur Baden

Martin Miller

Dr. Rosen

Michael Goodliffe

Don Jarvis

Jack Watson

Chief Insp. Gregg

Shirley Anne Field

Pauline Shields

Pamela Green

Milly

John Barrard

Small Man

William Baskiville

Policeman

Keith Baxter

Det. Baxter

Jack Carter

St John's Medic

Linda Castle

Guest at Birthday Party

Technical Specifications

Aspect Ratio: 1.66 : 1

Other Details

Country of Origin: United Kingdom

Language: English

Summaries

Plot Summary

Filmmaker and photographer Mark Lewis (Karl Heinz Böhm) spends days searching for just the right female models for his films which are studies of fear. He was raised by a psychologist father who used Mark as a subject for his own studies of fear and the exposure has left him marked psychologically so that he now is compelled to continue his search for women he murders for the camera as he films their reactions. Mark lives in the upper floors of his family house where he also has his photo lab and rents the downstairs to Helen Stephens (Anna Massey) and her blind mother Mrs. Stephens (Maxine Audley) whom he avoids until one day on Helen's birthday when the young nubile girl introduces herself to the photographer and they feel a connection. Mark trusts Helen enough to show her the films that his psychologist father took of him as a boy and the images disturb the girl but draws her closer to Mark. Mark's jobs as studio camera man for a film studio and cheesecake photographer for a local photo shop allows him easy access to women whom he murders while photographing to show their reactions to fear. When Helen accidentally sees some of his killing films she is appalled but wants to help Mark but the release of his secret is too much to bear as the police close in.

Storyline

Mark Lewis, works as a focus puller in a British film studio. On his off hours, he supplies a local porno shop with cheesecake photos and also dabbles in filmmaking. A lonely, unfriendly, sexually repressed fellow, Mark is obsessed with the effects of fear and how they are registered on the face and behavior of the frightened. This obsession dates from the time when, as a child, he served as the subject of some cold-blooded experiments in terror conducted by his own scientist father. As a grown man, Mark becomes a compulsive murderer who kills women and records their contorted features and dying gasps on film. His ongoing project is a documentary on fear. With 16mm camera in hand, he accompanies a prostitute to her room and stabs her with a blade concealed in his tripod, all the while photographing her contorted face in the throes of terror and death. Alone in his room, he surrounds himself with the sights and sounds of terror: taped screams, black-and-white "home movies" of convulsed faces. At his house, he meets Helen Stephens, a young woman who lives with her blind mother in a downstairs flat. She visits his flat, where he shows her black-and-white films that were taken of him when he was a child. She is horrified to see that his father used him as a guinea pig in various experiments, taking movies of his reactions of fear. — alfiehitchie In London, lonely photographer Mark Lewis works in a film studio and moonlights supplying cheesecake photos to a magazine store. He lives in the huge house that he had inherited from his parents that is rented to tenants to help him pay the bills and keep the building. Mark was the subject of bizarre experiments of effects of the fear conducted by his scientist father since he was a child and he has become a disturbed man obsessed by the face of frightened women in the moment of death. He kills women filming their faces while he stabs them in the throat. When Mark meets his neighbor and tenant Helen Stephens on the day of her birthday, he befriends her and soon he dates the young woman. Mark has a crush on Helen and does not want to film her. But Mark is one of the suspects and a detective is tracking him down. — Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil As a boy, Mark Lewis was subjected to bizarre experiments by his scientist-father, who wanted to study and record the effects of fear on the nervous system. Now grown up, both of his parents dead, Mark works by day as a focus-puller for a London movie studio. He moonlights by taking girlie pictures above a news agent's shop. But Mark has also taken up a horrifying hobby: He murders women while using a movie camera to film their dying expressions of terror. One evening, Mark meets and befriends Helen Stephens, a young woman who rents one of the rooms in his house. Does Helen represent some kind of possible redemption for Mark - or is she unknowingly running the risk of becoming one of his victims? — Eugene Kim <genekim@concentric.net>

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