Peeping Tom is a strange fascination. The mystery is not who is behind the camera but what and because we meet the killer early, we can follow him and learn a little of his motivations. A quiet, tortured voyeur so out of place in the fetishistic pits of sixties Soho London. His own camera is our witness to the paralysing fear he inspires in his victims.

Like all good directors: passionate and deranged.

A killer has finally hit his point of no return and filming of the Peeping Tom’s murderous movie begins shooting in earnest. Memories on film of a strange childhood subject to his father’s bizarre study of the growing human, mitigate the killer’s twisted development. As we share these memories with him, some of the hatred we feel for this maladjusted man is directed at his sickeningly scientific father; a bastard indifferent to the long term impact of his invasive filming. Mark deserves, and gets pity despite the lurid way his poor coping skills are manifest. He is a mess of contradictions: a gentle man corrupted by the cruelty of others and we can see this battle played out in his soul through the exceptional performance of Karlheinz Bohm in the lead role.

The loner Mark leaves a wide trail and soon the police begin to close in yet this is no cop drama, it’s a brilliant noir psycho thriller which stays on the killer and his rapid ascent toward ‘serial work.’ Clearly unbalanced and disorganised, our Peeping Tom is a sweet man with lethal urges, whose meagre facade unravels before us at increasing speed. We wonder how far his sordid documentary of fear will develop.

Never take a first date to the movies.

Bohm plays the twisted lead with frightening accuracy; his pain and confusion are obvious. How he manages to attract the girl next door (Anna Massey) is a bit of a mystery but there is a slant on this killer and the sweet girl relationship: what part will she play? Hers is a worrying attraction and her suffering mother agrees. Driven to capture the look of fear, the killer’s obsessive relationship with his camera reflects and frames his narrow viewfinder detachment. The early slaying of a prostitute is replayed through the camera’s aspect in a great opening sequence that helps us experience the killer’s detachment from his victim.

Daunting close ups and tones of blood in the dark, moody light set a frenetic escalation of tension. There is no tedious plot shaping dialogue, just simple, insightful language complementing a succession of individually crafted scenes that blend together into a seamless narrative. Tight camera angles build a hypnotic aura around our killer, inspiring the same claustrophobic torment that Mark must feel inside his deranged mind. It is in the close up portraits of the mad moviemaker that the cinematography and lighting combine to create a brilliant visualisation of a turbulent inner mood. Those contradictions within are maintained throughout the film and the viewer suffers them also, as a tight script and great acting force us to be repulsed by and sympathise with the insane but strangely docile maniac.

That's not what I meant by 'cut.'

The score to Peeping Tom is as manic as the man himself: vibrant and creepy, delivered in a reliable if slightly uninspiring mono. The picture quality is given great assistance by the look of this film and thankfully the dark shades are not deprived of the contrasting light used to darken this killer’s soul, not his face. It is a good transfer of the original which has an eerie comic book appearance in some scenes, especially the night-time portrayal of sleazy Soho. The effect is stunning and is faithfully reproduced here. The somewhat cropped 16:9 format contributes to the constrictive feel of the movie but more by accident than design.

Peeping Tom rates as a classic British film; a jagged reality rendered to the screen with sharp direction. It is more than a psycho killer movie; groundbreaking for its time and original in the intimate treatment of the murderous mindset and its motivation. The visual styling and edgy performance of the lead are enough to make this one for the collection of those fans of seedy film noir and intimate studies of the deranged.