Peeping Tom

Mark Lewis is a quiet young man who works as a focus puller at a film studio and earns extra money taking glamour photographs above a newsagent's shop. In his apartment he keeps a darkroom and a camera he rarely puts down. He tells people he is making a documentary about fear, and he befriends Helen Stephens, the daughter of the family who live below him. What Mark actually records is the terror on the faces of women as they die in front of his lens, killings carried out with a blade fixed to his tripod.

The film was directed and produced by Michael Powell, his tenth feature, released in 1960. Following a run of celebrated work in the 1940s and 1950s including The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffmann, it marked a sharp change of subject and tone that damaged his standing in Britain at the time. Leo Marks wrote the screenplay. Karlheinz Böhm plays Mark, with Anna Massey as Helen, Moira Shearer as Vivian, Maxine Audley as Mrs. Stephens, Brenda Bruce as Dora and Miles Malleson as the elderly customer. Forty-one performers are credited.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 7.4 out of 10 from 932 votes. On TMDB it is rated 8.8 out of 10 from 61 reviews. The wide gap between the two figures reflects how much the film's reputation has grown since a hostile initial reception.