My original plan was to mention the Canadian movie Pin during the 31 Days of Horror. It is a fun little look at schizophrenia that scared the bejesus out of me when I was a teenager. Now that I have revisited it I spent some time trying to decide whether or not I’d recommend it. I’ve let it sit just floating around in my mind since I watched it back in the beginning of October and contemplated over it. I had pretty much decided to do the write up until this past weekend when I came across Michael Powell’s 1960 horror thriller Peeping Tom.

In the opening scene of Peeping Tom we witness a solitary man (Carl Boehm) walking up to a lone woman standing in the street. On his way to her the camera focuses in on his front and we we see that he is holding a video camera. The view switches to that of the camera being held and we are witness to him picking up the prostitute and heading to her room near by. Once in the room she begins to undress while making some small talk. As she sits on the bed a strange look comes to her face as a bright light shines down upon her, she screams and we cut away. The woman has been killed and we learn from the police that they have never seen anyone look as scared as she did. We watch later as the killer views the film in a dark room.

One evening on his way home the killer watches a birthday party taking place through a window. He enters into the house and starts to head up stairs. It is at this point that we learn that his name is Mark Lewis when he is invited in by Vivian (Moira Shearer) who’s birthday it is. Mark is shy and turns her down citing that he has to work. Vivian is attracted to Mark and comes up to see Mark. Mark at this point has already gotten ready to watch his film. He quickly cleans up and invites her in. The two hit it off and Mark is able to overcome his shyness when she wants to see his films. Mark proceeds to show her a film which his father filmed while he was growing up. Even with Mark being quite strange and the film obviously shows that Mark had a very difficult childhood Vivian is not deterred.

He wants a relationship with Vivian and sees her as something perfect and is unwilling to ever film her. While his relationship is growing he continues on his path of murder. He makes friends with a stand in at the film studio for which he works with the offer of filming her and making her into a star. This leads to her eventual murder and the police linking the two murders by the similar look of terror on her face.

The police are getting closer to tracking down Mark and he knows it but it does not bother him. He continues on his planned path with the intentions of finishing his “documentary”. Everything builds up to the point when Vivian finally views Mark’s film and her finding out just what Mark scares his victims with.

While Pin provides an excellent look at schizophrenia Peeping Tom does so much more that provide a look into a mentally unstable person. It touches on Freudian aspects of the relationship between Mark and his father and how someone like Mark could be created and delves into. Mark is quite the sympathetic murderer. We truly care for him and want him to be helped yet we also cant help but be drawn into watching the acts that he is committing. This is most interesting aspect of the film as it deals with the voyeurism. It is very easy to draw a relationship between the audience of Peeping Tom sitting in a dark room watching Mark murder women to that of Mark himself sitting the dark room viewing himself committing the murder.

At the time of its release Peeping Tom was panned by the critics en masse. Now, 48 years later it is one of the classics of British Cinema and is lauded by critics and film maker alike. Martin Scorsese himself commented:

“I have always felt that Peeping Tom and 8½ say everything that can be said about film-making, about the process of dealing with film, the objectivity and subjectivity of it and the confusion between the two. 8½ captures the glamour and enjoyment of film-making, while Peeping Tom shows the aggression of it, how the camera violates… From studying them you can discover everything about people who make films, or at least people who express themselves through films.”