The film that helped create the slasher (at least in the UK) was Michael Powell’s landmark serial killer classic, Peeping Tom, and it is finally getting the lavish 4K restoration it has long deserved. Restored by The Film Foundation and BFI National Archive in association with STUDIOCANAL, this influential cinematic masterpiece will be available on Special Edition 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD with a 32-page booklet and 90 mins of brand new extra content from January 29 2024.
Now regarded as a ground-breaking masterpiece of the British horror movement, on its initial release in 1960, the film received a savage reception from critics dismayed by its controversial subject matter and the sympathy it seems to engender for its murderous protagonist. The second film from visionary director Michael Powell, following his run of the 1940s and 50s classics collaborating with screenwriter Emeric Pressburger, the film left Powell’s career in tatters, and Peeping Tom was made unavailable for many years.
In the years since its release, the film has become recognized as a watershed in genre cinema, its themes of voyeurism and psychopathy proving hugely influential on the evolution of the slasher movie.
Mark (Carl Boehm), a focus puller at the local film studio, supplements his wages by taking glamour photographs in a seedy studio above a newsagent. By night, he is a killer, stalking his victims with his camera forever in his hand, trying to capture the look of genuine, unadulterated fear – an obsession that stems from his disturbing and terrifying childhood at the hands of his scientist father. Mark slowly becomes enamoured with Helen (Anna Massey), who lives with her blind mother (Maxine Audley) in the flat downstairs, but how long before he turns the deadly gaze of his camera towards her?
