Peeping Tom

The Faber Classic Screenplay Series presents the very best writing from the history of cinema.Peeping Tom tells the story of a film cameraman who kills young women by impaling them with the sharp point of his camera. The pleasure he gets from the murders comes from filming his victims as they die. When it was released in 1960, Peeping Tom was seen as a horror film; now it is considered to be a powerful demonstration of both the victimization of women under the male gaze and the voyeurism inherent in cinema. It is also a film of dark, unsettling humour. This is the film that destroyed Michael Powell's career in the wake of the howls of outrage that greeted its release. Now it is seen as one of his most completely realized works.