Peeping Tom (1960) presented by Dark Dream Cinema

A film so notorious that it nearly ended director Michael Powell’s career, Peeping Tom remains a dark horse within the horror canon, one of the most damning and incendiary comments on the voyeuristic nature of film. Centering on a photographer who moonlights as a killer, its provocative blend of psychology and violence stirred nothing less than outrage in its native UK. Critics were quick to condemn its perceived air of depravity, perhaps recognizing it as a personal attack upon their very livelihood; today, the film reads as a document ahead of its time, released the same year that Psycho and Eyes Without a Face dragged horror into the modern era, and its prosaic presentation of cold-hearted sadism is still every bit as effective now as it was then.

“Martin Scorsese once said that this movie, and Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2, contain all that can be said about directing. The Fellini film is about the world of deals and scripts and show biz, and the Powell [film] is about the deep psychological process at work when a filmmaker tells his actors to do as he commands, while he stands in the shadows and watches.” -Roger Ebert