Peeping Tom

                Along with Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960) is considered to be the grandfather of the slasher film. Psycho contains a man in costume and a killer who slashes people with a kitchen knife, but Peeping Tom features more of the aesthetics that would go on to be associated with the horror subgenre.

                The most obvious of these visuals is the point of view shot. The killer here is filming his murders as they happen and we the audience gets to see these films within the film. The opening murder of the prostitute shows a long tracking POV shot that shows up almost 20 years later in John Carpenter’s Halloween before being ripped off in almost every subsequent slasher, almost to the point of comedic proportions in the Sleepaway Camp films.

                There is also the stand in’s murder scene at the film studio. She enters the sound stage to meet up with Mark, unaware he is a killer. The studio seems empty and is eerily quiet. She calls his name a few times, with no answer. Suddenly spot lights come on, pointed at the actress. She is blinded by the light and can’t see Mark. After toying with her a bit longer, he finally appears to continue his game of cat and mouse before killing her. The buildup to the murder in slasher films is often much more suspenseful than the murder themselves. The audience knows people are going to die, it’s the when that builds tension. This scene in Peeping Tom set this device to be used many times over.

                Psychology plays a large part in Peeping Tom. Mark, played by Carl Bohm, was abused by his father at a young age by being constantly scared by him while on film. His father used these films as research to write a book on the psychology of fear. Due to this, Mark grows up feeling that his place is behind a camera and uses it as a security blanket. When a date insists he leave his camera behind, he becomes anxious and fearful at not being able to escape behind the lens when confronted with other people.

                The larger psychological effect is that he believes the camera should be used to capture fear. His murders are almost sexual and he has a fetish for fear. Bohm, playing mark, reminds me of a blond Peter Lorre. The both are able to capture the perverse and the fear of that perversion at the same time. Like Lorre’s murderous child killer in M, Bohm conveys a sense of being out of control and hating himself for it without having to say a word of dialogue. His eyes say it all. This sympathy towards the killer is what makes the film truly disturbing.

                Unlike the later wave of slasher films, this film actually has something important to say. It is a comment on the voyeurism of viewers and the complicity they (we) have in the images of horror films. The killer is only sympathetic because we sympathize with him.  Doesn’t this make us as perverse as the titular peeping tom?

Carl Bohm in Peeping Tom (1960)