Slashers & Serial Killers in Review: PEEPING TOM (1960)
Starring: Karl Bohm and Anna Massey
Directed by: Michael Powell
Written by: Leo Marks
This review is spoiler-heavy.
Peeping Tom has a lot going for it. It’s widely accepted to be the first ever ‘slasher’ film, released months before Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho in 1960. It is also the first horror film to show us scenes from the killer’s perspective, a technique that has since become somewhat of a genre trope (John Carpenter’s Halloween 1978, Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead 1981, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining 1980, to name but a few).
The acting performances are great and the directing is superb. The story is original, the script is competent, and the movie is generally well paced and atmospheric. So it may come to many as a surprise that upon its theatrical release, Peeping Tom was critically reviled and it was detested by the public, so much so that the film was pulled from distribution, its cinema run was cut short, and it was banned. It practically disappeared until Martin Scorsese revived it in the late 1970s. It’s generally acknowledged as the film that ended (director) Michael Powell’s career. Powell’s previous work included A Matter of Life and Death (AKA Stairway to Heaven) (1946), A Canterbury Tale (1944), and The Red Shoes (1948). He was a beloved and highly acclaimed filmmaker, until he released Peeping Tom. After this, he was able to get some film work, mostly abroad, but then his career tragically died, much like several of his Peeping Tom characters. Continue Reading
Creature Features in Review: Humanoids from the Deep (1980)
[ BIG SPOILERS—like, skip-to-the-number-score-if-you’re-actually-worried level spoilers ]
Okay, two things right out of the gate: this movie is terrible… but I’m going to explain to you why I feel (if you enjoy a certain level of badbad = goodgood) you should still watch it.
Also, it’s basically about mutant fish people raping women (when they aren’t killing everyone else to get to that) but seeing as how I highly doubt there are going to be humanoid fish people waddling out of the sea and actually raping anyone anytime soon, I’m not going to address that further in any serious way after this intro. I also won’t make a joke out of it, though, and you can call me what you like for that. Continue Reading
Machine Mean 