A Movie Review of Peeping Tom (1960)

Peeping Tom is about a man obsessed with filming the reaction of fear in people. He goes to great lengths to achieve a perfect reaction and capture it; he kills people to record their fear. He starts out killing without remorse, but at the end he loses control and his obsession takes over.

 

Mark Lewis was emotionally scarred by his father, who would always have a camera on him to record when Mark was afraid. As an adult he continues his father’s work. Although the movie tries to show him as a cold-blooded killer, I think he shows too much emotion to be considered one. He also has a lot of different and contradicting traits. He is shown to be distant and afraid of people, but then really friendly with his co-workers. When he is interviewed by the detective, Mark is confident enough to give them the camera with the footage, but then in the same scene he is way too impatient to have it back.

The Movie has some really interesting ideas that where dropped latter through the film. The opening scene is from the point of view of Mark’s camera, and then he goes back and watches the film that same night. They repeat this with the next murder, but then stop doing it. Using the point of view from Mark’s camera is used extensively in the first half, but then is almost absent from the rest of the film. I shows that Mark’s character doesn’t need to hide so much behind his camera as the story progresses, but I wish they could had stayed with that mechanic throughout the film. My favorite thing in the movie was the fact that he would go back to watch the tape of his latest victim, just moments after it had happened. Too bad they did away with that, and that there weren't enough killings.

Peeping Tom has some interesting concepts and ideas, but the characters are not fully developed. The dialogue is not the best and some things could have been explained better, like why Mike father was obsessed with fear, or how the blind lady knows to be suspicious of Mark and his work. And who was the other guy that lived in the house?

It's not such a good movie, I have no idea if they wanted to to horror or drama, or thriller, it was all over the place.

MOVIE SCORE:

• 6/10
• D (O.W.L.)