4K Restoration Trailer for Michael Powell’s ‘Peeping Tom’ from 1960
by Alex Billington
October 9, 2023
Source: YouTube
“All this filming isn’t healthy…” Studiocanal UK has unveiled a brand new trailer for a 4K restoration + re-release of a provocative classic titled Peeping Tom. This originally opened in 1960, but then was banned and shunned for years, finally being appreciated only decades later as a precursor to slasher films. It was the second film made on his own by Michael Powell, one half of the famous Powell & Pressburger duo, but this time he explores a dark topic. A young man murders women, using a movie camera to film their dying expressions of terror. Now regarded as a ground-breaking masterpiece of the British horror movement, on its initial release in 1960, Peeping Tom received a savage reception from critics who were dismayed by its controversial subject matter and the sympathy it seems to engender for its murderous protagonist. An influential cinematic film written by Leo Marks, starring Carl Boehm, Anna Massey, Moira Shearer, and Maxine Audley, Peeping Tom also plays as part of the BFI’s Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds of Powell and Pressburger season at BFI Southbank and across the UK (16 Oct – 31 Dec) and at the Lumière Film Festival in Lyon, France (14 – 22 Oct). A rare chance to catch this film on the big screen! If you dare…
Here’s the new 4K restoration trailer (+ poster) for Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, direct from YouTube:
Mark (starring Carl Boehm), a focus puller at a local film studio, supplements his wages taking glamour photographs in a seedy studio above a newsagent. By night he is a sadistic 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? The second film from visionary director Michael Powell, following his major run of 1940s and 50s classics collaborating with screenwriter Emeric Pressburger, Peeping Tom left Powell’s career in tatters and the film was made unavailable for many years. Peeping Tom has since become recognised as a watershed in genre cinema, its themes of voyeurism and psychopathy proving hugely influential on the evolution of the slasher movie. Written by Leo Marks, and directed by Michael Powell, Peeping Tom initially opened in April of 1960 in the UK, only later showing up in the US in 1961. Studiocanal will re-release Peeping Tom in 4K in UK cinemas starting October 27th, 2023 before it hits VOD / Blu-ray in January 2024. Anyone seen this one before?
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