today i’ve been thinking a lot about “Peeping Tom”, made in 1962. Completely perverse & brilliant. So brilliant it ruined michael powells career. Which im sure he’s greatful for now. When your career is ruined, in years you become a genious to critics everywhere. And thoes critics shame the critics before them who called your work rubbish. They called it rubbish, we call is genious. However, theres always a fine line between the two.
So Mark, the main character in the film, carries around a camera. He shoots whatever he sees. The film opens with him filming a prostitute who advises him “it’ll be two quid” for her services. Once alone with her he reveals that one of the legs on his camera stand is actually some sort of ice pick. He slowly leans into her and as this is going on she can see the fear on her own face in the mirror attached to the top of the camera. Mark has made it so the last thing the victims sees before death is their own face frozen in horror. He continues this throughout the film and is eventually brought down. However, this is not whats important about this or any other film. The importance of peeping tom lies in the creation o Mark. The reason that this film ruined micheal powells career was NOT becasue it was perverse and women were being brutalized and killed. It is because unlike the myth created by a white supremist society, the killer in this case was an extremely likeable, sweet, handsome, talented guy. In 1962, this couldnt be. There were specific threats on the world and they did not include the composit character that would eventually become mark. The Haunting (1963) and Psycho (1960) symbolized perfectly what 1960’s audiences were to be afraid of: “ghosts” and the unstable “cross dressing” killer. These are extremes. The 1960’s audience lived on extremes, not that the person next door could be a threat.
I’ll keep thinking, but i know there is something more to this. When was the rise of the serial killer? Was it psycho? Or is that just wishful thinking? I know how much everyone loves to credit hitchcock for EVERY horror film tool, but i like to explore.
This weeks Films:
Rebecca (1940)
Aliens (1986)
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
