Click here to buy posters! Anglo-Amalgamated unloaded around $560,000 on making Peeping Tom, the biggest load of coin it had ever invested in one picture. It's as well, for stripped of its colour and some excellent photography plus imaginative direction by Michael Powell, the plot itsef would have emerged as a shoddy yarn. Story concerns a young man who, as a boy, was used as a guinea-pig by his father (played by Powell himself), a noted professor studying the symptoms of fear. The boy grows up to become an insane killer obsessed with the desire to photograph the terror on the faces of his victims as he kills them. He also has an unhealthy craving for peeping at young lovers, hence the title. In between these activities, he has a regular job as an assistant cameraman in a film studio and a part time job of photographing saucy pictures. This mixed-up young man is played rather stolidly by Carl Boehm. It is more the the fault of the screenplay than the actor himself that one gets a very superficial glimpse into the workings of his mind. Anna Massey is charming as the girl who is one of his tenants and befriends him before she realizes he is a killer. Maxine Audley, as her blind mother, tackles a difficult, unrewarding role very well. Brenda Bruce has a few good moments at the beginning of the film as a streetwalker who is the first victim while Moira Shearer i effective as another of his victims, an ambitious bit player who is murdered while he is pretending to give her a screen test on a deserted studio lot. Powell has directed with imagination but he might well have tightened up the story line. The standout feature of Peeping Tom is some fascinating photography by Otto Heller, particularly in the film studio sequences. His use of colour and shadow is most effective. Heller does much to give Peeping Tom a veneer which the story by Leo Marks does not entirely deserve. 3 STARS OUT OF 5 peeping tom dvds | videos al pacino | michelle pfeiffer yul brynner | christopher plummer | romy schneider the godfather | the godfather part ii marlon brando | james caan | diane keaton | al pacino laurence olivier | clark gable | vivien leigh | leslie howard | alfred hitchcock | robert montgomery | grace kelly olivia de havilland | humphrey bogart | howard hawks | frank capra | charlie chaplin | lauren bacall | fritz lang jean harlow | greta garbo | ava gardner | audrey hepburn | edward g. robinson | john garfield erich von stroheim | wim wenders | madeleine carroll | marlene dietrich | rita hayworth powell & pressburger dvds powell & pressburger videos peeping tom dvds | videos al pacino | michelle pfeiffer yul brynner | christopher plummer | romy schneider the godfather | the godfather part ii marlon brando | james caan | diane keaton | al pacino laurence olivier | clark gable | vivien leigh | leslie howard | alfred hitchcock | robert montgomery | grace kelly olivia de havilland | humphrey bogart | howard hawks | frank capra | charlie chaplin | lauren bacall | fritz lang jean harlow | greta garbo | ava gardner | audrey hepburn | edward g. robinson | john garfield erich von stroheim | wim wenders | madeleine carroll | marlene dietrich | rita hayworth Page created by: lenin@netcomuk.co.uk Changes last made: 2004