Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with the newest installment of Quint’s Watching.
[I ended my A Movie A Day column in January of 2009, but the passion for discovering previously unseen film is still strong… and the DVD stacks of unseen movies are as tall as they have ever been, so this column will carry the AMAD torch, minus the ridiculous day to day deadline. This column will fluctuate depending on my work-load, sometimes appearing many times a week, sometimes none, but it will be a priority for me nonetheless.]
Today we’re going to discuss 1960’s pre-PSYCHO British stalker flick PEEPING TOM, directed by Michael Powell.
This one has been a long time coming, the legend preceding my purchase of the Criterion disc back in October when I included it in the running for the All Horror AMAD run. I never pulled the title, so it went back onto the “to watch stack,” which is actually a “to watch” DVD shelf, which is about 300 DVDs strong at the moment, not counting the gangster, noir and various other box sets.
I liked getting an idea of what you guys wanted me to cover next, so I think I’ll keep that idea going. You clearly picked PEEPING TOM, so that’s what I went with.
Right off the bat the movie showed me it was a few decades ahead of its time. PEEPING TOM precedes the point of view killer movies (just beating PSYCHO and coming some 14 years before the awesome BLACK CHRISTMAS and 18 years before Carpenter made it a slasher staple with HALLOWEEN), but does it in such a way as to really beat the trend of video/technology horror.
Our main character is Mark Lewis, played by Carl Boehm who kept reminding me of a young Udo Kier. And he’s the bad guy. So already this movie is a bold form of storytelling. Before it became the norm in the ‘70s, this film focused on a character that should be the villain, but instead asks the audience to sympathize with him, see through his eyes.
And there’s the key factor that I was able to hold on to. Put into its correct context this is an amazing movie, but I’m afraid most who visit this film today, especially young horror fans who know all the ins and outs of the genre, will write it off as dull or nothing new.
But like all truly exceptional films, the more distance you get from it the more you should be able to peel back layers and find something new underneath. What this film has to say about voyeurism and how it relates to the cinema-going experience is quite smart, essentially forcing the viewing audience into a position of being accomplice to the murders that Boehm commits.
The basic plot is simple. Our lead was tormented by his father, a scientist who used his son as a guinea pig to test the psychological effects of fear at a young age. Young Mark Lewis is a handsome man, but due to his childhood trauma is now obsessed with fear, especially how one sees fear. So, he ends up killing some women while filming them dying, capturing their terror. There’s another component, some extra device that they see before they die that we aren’t clued in to until the very end.
The complexity of the material comes with how Michael Powell and screenwriter Leo Marks deal with Mark and his obsession.
The critics at the time of release were appalled at how they make the murderer sympathetic, but if you watch the movie they don’t really make him out to be a good guy or bad guy, just a man struggling with the same kind of issues everybody else struggles with, but with Mark there is one filter that is not in place, one switch flipped the wrong way that enables him to act out violently. We’re asked to sympathize with him not because of his acts but because of his humanity.
While Boehm’s line delivery isn’t the best in the world, what he is able to capture is the conflict within this man. He’s an introvert, has no real connection to the world until he meets the girl living in the flat downstairs, an auburn-headed English beauty named Helen, played by Anna Massey (Hitchcock’s FRENZY). He opens up to her in a way he hasn’t been able to with anybody else and you get the feeling that she stands a chance of helping him give up his obsession. As Nicholson said, she makes him want to be a better man.
But his dark side is so ingrained that he just can’t help himself. It’s an itch he can’t ignore for long and he knows this. At one point in the movie you can see him wrestle with the hope of getting better and living a normal life with this woman, but either self-doubt or stark reality makes up his mind and he stays his course, doing his best to keep Anna Massey out of the way of his obsession.
Massey’s character lives with her mum, who is blind, but can sense there’s something off about this strange man. It’s not so much Daredevil like super senses, but maybe an innate distrust built into her character. She also hears him rustling about on the floor above… she has a great line later on in the movie when she confronts Mark saying she’s always wondered what his film room was like, saying she visits it every night. “The blind always live in the rooms they live under.”
Mark’s murders soon start catching up to him and his place of work (as a camera assistant on a London soundstage) comes under scrutiny when he kills a wannabe actress working there as a stand-in. Instead of fretting over it and panicking, Mark instead welcomes it. He has an overall plan that he detailed to the bitter end and only questions diverging from that plan when Anna Massey comes into his life.
I respect this flick a lot and I even like it almost as much as I respect it, which doesn’t always happen with these types of movies, the ones where their reputation arrives months or years before the film actually plays before your eyes. I personally like the still not on DVD TWISTED NERVE more than PEEPING TOM, but I will admit that PEEPING TOM is a more important film in that it started a trend instead of following one.
If you pick up or rent the Criterion disc make sure to watch the documentary on Leo Marks, the screenwriter. It’s fascinating stuff, maybe even more entertaining than the movie. Marks became known as being a code-cracker during WW2 and he brought a lot of that unique knowledge to this screenplay. They underline much of the subtlety of the movie and start the process of peeling back the layers of the film.
Final Thoughts: While not the flashiest film, PEEPING TOM still stands the test of time, especially when you put it into context of release. Not only did this film predate like horror films, but it influenced them. There’s a particular story told in the documentary about Alfred Hitchcock being pressured into doing early press screenings for PSYCHO and he refused, citing “Look what happen to Michael Powell’s film.” The press so shredded it and decried it as despicable trash that they killed it before it had a chance to live. What you do get in this film is a fascinating portrayal of a deeply flawed man, solid performances across the board (I especially love the perfectionist director at the studio where Mark works) and some really pretty early ‘60s color photography. Also keep an eye out for director Michael Powell playing Mark’s abusive father in the family movies.
Here’s what’s on the docket:
I CONFESS (1953)
THE ILLUSTRATED MAN (1969)
HUSH… HUSH SWEET CHARLOTTE (1965)
HI, MOM! (1970)
THE BEGUILED (1970)
KOTCH (1971)
THE LOVED ONE (1965)
RABID (1977)
THE ADVENTURE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES’ SMARTER BROTHER (1975)
If I remember right, THE LOVED ONE and RABID were the two most talked about left on the list. What do you think I should jump onto next?
My detour to San Francisco for WonderCon killed the column for last week and I have the double whammy of SXSW and ShoWest in the next 3 weeks, but I’d like to fit at least one more Quint’s Watching column in before South By starts, so let me know what you think and I’ll try to cram the flick in Sunday or Monday.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
