When people think of the work of Michael Powell, they tend to remember his partnership with Emric Pressbuger and their classic, sweeping works of earnest drama and romance. Films like The Red Shoes, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, or The Tales of Hoffman. The idea that Powell, then, would be responsible for one of cinema’s first slashers seems almost impossible to fathom.
But, that’s where Peeping Tom sits. Released just one month before Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Powell’s horror thriller achieved none of the success of its American counterpart. It may have been due to Powell’s prior reputation as a director of romance, adventure, and dramatic, serious film, it may have been the film’s association with other low budget exploitation horror movies, or it may have been the movie’s more aggressive sexual themes. Whatever the reason, upon initial release Peeping Tom was a bomb.
Time, however, has told a different tale. Imbued with Powell’s ever-present eye for rich color and dreamlike imagery and grounded by an excellent performance from Karlheinz Bohm, Peeping Tom is an excellent display of the ways in which the legacy of abuse is passed down from generation to generation.
Three years before Mario Bava would release his seminal giallo film, The Girl Who Knew Too Much, all the style, imagery, themes and chills had been presented to British audiences. It’s just too bad they didn’t know what they were seeing.
Special Features (via criterion.com)
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Two audio commentaries, one featuring film historian Ian Christie and one featuring film scholar Laura Mulvey
- Introduction by filmmaker Martin Scorsese
- Interview with editor Thelma Schoonmaker
- Documentary about the film’s history, featuring interviews with Schoonmaker, Scorsese, and actor Carl Boehm
- Documentary about screenwriter Leo Marks
- Program on the film’s restoration
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by author Megan Abbott
