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Overview
We love bringing you the movies that have influenced and inspired many of today’s top horror movies. Peeping Tom is definitely one of those. After watching it, do you agree it should be considered the first slasher movie? Or is it more psychological horror? Trying to answer those questions is what makes this movie significant.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054167
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peeping_Tom_(1960_film)
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Transcript
Side Dish 10 – Peeping Tom
[00:00:00]
stephen: All right, so another new one. We’ve been really rolling on some of these. We’re getting a quite a big list of these side dish, public domain ones out, and we talked about this one. It’s an interesting one and it’s a good time of year for us to talk about it because this one’s peeping Tom, which actually isn’t super old.
But it’s arguably by a lot of people considered the first slasher film. And that’s a topic we should discuss.
Rhys: Okay. Yeah. Peeping Tom. It was directed by Mickey Powell. He did like right?
stephen: Okay.
Rhys: He did 59 pieces. The movies from like 1960.
stephen: Right.
Rhys: And Mickey Powell was born in 1905. He died in 1990. He had, over his career, he got 20 nominations and 10 wins. But not on, unlike Todd Browning with Freaks, this movie kind of did him in as far as [00:01:00] his career went.
But yeah, there’s this whole thing, I think there’s a differentiation, at least in my mind, between your typical slasher and a first person slasher from first person point of view.
stephen: thinking the exact same thing. Yep.
Rhys: So you had most recently you had maniac with Elijah Wood.
He’s almost not even listed in the credits. ’cause you barely see him because it’s his perspective. You’re seeing the camera is are his eyes. So if he’s looking in a mirror, you can see him. He, as far as cast goes, he’s hardly in the movie at all. Black Christmas, 1974, a lot of people are like, oh, that’s the first instance of the first person slasher film.
Then peeping Tom gets thrown out there. But if you go back to 1945, there was a movie called Hangover Square, which arguably is the first slasher film in the year before [00:02:00] that, there was something called the Lodger, which again was very similar. So I know, what is it in Scream four, they list peeping Tom as the first slasher movie ever.
And it’s okay, but that’s kinda lazy research on your part. There were other example before it.
stephen: And watching it. It feels more like a Hitchcock thriller than it did a slasher. And I think part of that is because the slasher didn’t really get defined until Freddy and Michael. Jason and Michael. Jason and Michael, that’s when it really started getting defined and then the genre kind of grew from that, from what I can see.
And so those are what built, the things that make it a slasher is what I would argue. It’s kinda like hair metal. There’s a lot of people thrown out as hair metal bands, but I don’t really, David Bowie is not the same type of music as poison, though. A lot of his stuff gets thrown as hair metal.
Rhys: Yeah,
stephen: or kiss.[00:03:00]
Rhys: I think what you have is you have this kind of nebulous cloud of slasher films and then you are traveling through time and you know you have one pop up here and you have one pop up here, and it’s just this kind of one-off weird, bizarre thing for its time. And then. Once gravity starts to assert itself on these and they coalesce into a star, that was the Friday, the 13th, the Halloween and so it’s not Friday the 13th wasn’t the first slasher film. It certainly did solidify the format, but there were lots of other ones that happened out there just floating around Nebulously that just went under the radar because they weren’t, they weren’t great. It wasn’t anything like that,
stephen: Yeah it’s more an inspiration that formed the slasher genre. You could probably list mold, it’s like a musician, Metallica, when I got the Metallica Rock [00:04:00] band because there was only so many Metallica songs. They threw in a lot of songs that were the inspiration for them.
What I consider an early Aerosmith heavy metal. At the time people might have, but now I don’t really consider it heavy metal. So yeah, it was the inspiration that led to that. Totally.
Rhys: Yeah. I think if you want to point to peeping Tom and hang a first of tag on it, it was considered the first mainstream British film to have full female nudity in it.
stephen: Oh yeah, briefly, very.
Rhys: Yeah. But it, the movie was more scandalous than anything else, and it was seen as a as an answer to Hitchcock’s success in the States.
So I.
stephen: And in that viewpoint, from historical viewpoint, I could see it like, what is this? It’s not a Hitchcock slasher. It, or it’s not a Hitchcock mystery. The focus on is [00:05:00] on killing people. And so I could see where it’s again, the beginning of that genre, the slasher, the sub. Genre of slasher in horror and why people would consider it horror, just like we talked about with diabolic.
I’m like, yeah, this really is not much of a horror. But at the time it was, and it led to other things. And here we got diabolic and peeping Tom in the same era of movies, and arguably this guy has psychological problems, which, is what, except for the supernatural dream. People on Slashers, that’s what most of the slashers are, some psychological problem.
Rhys: The if you’re. In Powell as you’re watching this all of the shots of the main character’s childhood with his father. That’s Mickey Powell and his kid.
stephen: Oh, hey son. Come here. I got a bonding experience for you.
Rhys: exactly. Mickey
stephen: Is he still alive? Do you know?
Rhys: Powell, he died in.
stephen: See, that’s sad because he lost [00:06:00] his career and that was the end of it, blah, blah, because of this alive in.
Rhys: He was still, by the time this came out, he was like, he was on the on the bath to board and stuff like that. So he was firmly established when this came out. And he’s still not unlike Todd Browning. He did films after this. They just really didn’t get much traction. He died at 85.
It’s not he was cut short in his career or anything like that, but Leo Marks wrote the piece and he only died in 2001 and he was 81 at the time, but he only wrote 10 pieces. I think the super interesting thing about Leo Marks is that he was a World War II Codebreaker.
stephen: Oh, cool.
Rhys: Yeah.
stephen: That that, that would, I’d love to chat with somebody that was like that’s, or the people with the Navajos that did the using the
Rhys: Yeah, the code. Yeah. This [00:07:00] movie ran and it’s funny how they have this listed. It had a budget of 133,394 pounds. So that’s how much it cost to make it. But then when you look at it, they listed as $149,000 gate, but that’s in dollars.
stephen: Right.
Rhys: So if you convert that into pounds at 1960s, exchange rates, it was a 53,000 pound release.
Again, horror movies typically make their money back on the backend, but that might not have been the case way back then because you didn’t have all the avenues like VHS or DVD or streaming. So they really did take a bath on this fiscally, but it was only in the theaters for five days before it got pulled.
stephen: Wow. And back then, that’s crazy. When they would go six months.
Rhys: Yeah. It was banned in New Zealand until 1992, which just blows my mind. ’cause when you watch [00:08:00] it, I don’t I don’t find anything overly objectionable by to it, even by 1980 standards.
stephen: Yeah. Oh, there’s a lot of, oh, I know he’s going to stab her. I know he is going to kill her, but we don’t see the blood, the gore the limbs flying. We don’t even really hear much screaming. It’s all hinted at.
Rhys: I think one of the things that I really thought that Powell, or maybe it was Marx, it’s hard to say whether it was the direction or the writing, but they did really well. This was a me, a British mirror of psycho, and I think they did a really great job of making that main character likable.
stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: He was, I, yeah, he was, it was, the sixties, so he is over the top with his acting and stuff, and, but okay, he was like a messed up introvert with a camera who killed people and you’re like. I really don’t find him that ob Norman Bates in Psycho is okay, you’re a creepy dude.
I, I’m not gonna wanna get a beer with you after work. But this guy was like, yeah, I can see you [00:09:00] sitting around and, discussing camera angles and stuff like that with the guy.
stephen: Yeah, and I thought the same thing. I’m like, you felt for the guy. He understands he has a problem. He’s struggling with it. It could have been booze or a crack or something. He knows he has a problem. He struggles with it. Even at some points he’s get in the shadow. So I don’t see you.
Or don’t look at me because I can’t resist and all that. And it’s interesting that he’s not just trying to kill people, he’s trying to capture the fear on camera. So it’s almost I don’t really wanna kill you, but to capture what I want, I have to, he is being pulled by his urgings the whole way.
And in some ways it was like, oh my God, dude, seriously. In other ways I was like, yeah, I feel for this guy a little bit. But maybe that’s the, a new genre. Maybe this is implied slasher. That’s a new, a horror genre. We’ll throw in there.
Rhys: I suppose, so likable to the point that like he comes home, there’s this birthday party downstairs with one of his tenants. He’s the landlord, and as soon as she figures out that he [00:10:00] is her landlord, he’s oh my gosh, are they charging you too much? Because I have a LA real estate agent who does it.
It’s not me. If they’re charging you too much, you tell me. It’s okay, what I mean. What a nice guy. She’s no, it’s all fine. This same nice guy is walking around and hiring prostitutes and stabbing them with the most ridiculously convoluted method of killing people
stephen: spike outta a tripod on the camera.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. This is one of Martin Scorsese’s favorite films.
stephen: Interesting.
Rhys: Yeah. But. It was shot in six weeks. So it was a pretty compressed timeline. And I, again, I think they, they did a decent job and it’s really, it’s a shame to me that it got the backlash that it did, because I don’t, you can sit there and say freaks shouldn’t have had that kind of backlash.
But in 1936. [00:11:00] That kind of thing was offensive to polite company. And I get it. This is
stephen: Yeah, we would’ve loved it
Rhys: Oh yeah.
stephen: because we’re not polite company.
Rhys: But this is 1960. This is, we’re bordering on like the summer of love and stuff like that.
stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: because you had a naked woman in it. And I think the really thing that I found fascinating about it was that it focused on the, industry of pornography in Great Britain at the time which is something like no one ever talks about right? In the States. Yeah. You got like the people versus Larry Flint and all this stuff that looks at the excess and of the porn industry, the United States, especially like in the seventies.
But. Like Great Britain, you never hear anything about it because it was like so buttoned up. Oh, I’m coming in to buy a newspaper. Oh, by the way.
stephen: Yeah. That early scene that, yeah. But that’s funny. The, this is coming [00:12:00] from the page three girls people, I.
Rhys: yeah. It’s, it just blows me away that I think that combination is what like, did the film in, but.
stephen: It, it could have been, if it was American, it wouldn’t have had the same negative reaction. If it was even 10 years later, it may not have had the same reaction,
Rhys: 10 years later, they wouldn’t even thought twice about it.
stephen: wouldn’t have even been on the sensor list.
Rhys: What’s it called? Nicholas Cage was in the remake and the bees, the wickerman, the wickerman came out in what? 73. And there’s just, there’s just naked women running around through fields, like throughout a third of that movie.
This certainly would’ve not even raised an eyebrow at this movie.
stephen: Yeah. I don’t know. You have HBO. Have you watched the new Peacemaker season?
Rhys: I haven’t. You know me in series I,
stephen: the first or second episode, there’s a whole orgy with multiple naked people running [00:13:00] around en engaged in various activities. And I’m just like, wow. That’s pretty intense for a DC This must be the image movies.
Rhys: The Vertigo films.
stephen: Yeah. There we go. Vertigo. That’s where I meant.
Rhys: peacemaker was just a DC title. He wasn’t vertigo. I, and I think that’s. That’s the stumbling block to actually getting a good, honest Constantine rendering is that Constantine had a whole lot of super objectionable stuff in the book, even by today’s standards.
So I can see people wanting to shy away from it or completely changing it, setting him in New York with black hair and
stephen: Right
Now. Now I think this peeping Tom did get a remake at one point, didn’t it? In the nineties.
Rhys: It might have. I don’t think I came across that, but
stephen: maybe it was one of the other movies I was looking up that we were doing.
Rhys: It wouldn’t surprise me if it did, but if it did, it [00:14:00] was so mundane that nobody talks about it.
stephen: Yeah, maybe I was wrong. Must been one of the other you were watching
Rhys: Yeah,
stephen: okay. Peeing.
Rhys: I don’t really think so. It’s a great movie. If you want to see like a slice of life from that weird pre sixties post World War ii, life in London. And, along the lines of the season we’re on, the actresses got all kinds of grief during the filming of this just because. What’s his name? Mitchell Powell, owed somebody a favor. So he let them come in for the nude shots, to be on set while they were doing it. And one of the actresses called him out on it. She is who is that person? And he is and she’s he’s not on cast. Get him outta here.
But along with the whole, season that we’re doing [00:15:00] presently with the female directors. This is a great example of just, oh, these aren’t really people. These are just naked models that I’m using for my thing, and I can pretty much do whatever I want with them.
stephen: And even the nudity was extremely minor. Most of the time they were wearing weird, silly lingerie.
Rhys: Yes, I.
stephen: I thought I was gonna say something else. I probably was, I don’t remember it. Oh, the one scene, it cracked me up there in an alley or whatever, but I’m looking at it, I’m like, wow, that just screams 1960s movie set waiting for some guy to come out singing, dancing in the singing in the rain. And it just looked just like that,
Rhys: Some lady come down on an umbrella.
stephen: Yes. Yeah. So one of those, oh, that’s it. The in the end, he regrets everything he’s done and he kills himself in the same way he was killing others. To capture that fear, that, that takes it outta the slasher realm, right there killing yourself and regretting all the deaths.
Rhys: Yeah, it’s very I’m hard pressed to think of a [00:16:00] movie that has a more personable slasher in it. You know what I.
stephen: stuffy dolls peeping, Tom’s stuffy dolls. And it’s funny too, the title is Peeping Tom, which we refer to. We think of more as like looking in people’s windows, but he was capturing it on film. So I thought the title itself was interesting to get people to. Understand what it was and an idea, but not quite convey what the movie was.
Rhys: Yeah,
stephen: So cool.
Rhys: What’s coming up next, Steve,
stephen: Oh, dear Lord. You know what?
Rhys: when we schedule these, you just put a thing saying, Reese is gonna ask what’s next?
stephen: Next, next. Hey, public domain, horror side dish, movie list. That’s what we need. Okay here. You know what, I’ll mention a couple. We’ve got House on Haunted Hill with a question mark just because it’s Vincent Price. We’ve done Last Man On Earth. So we may we’ll think about it, maybe we’ll talk about, but White Zombie is after that.
So I know that’s been around a long time.
Rhys: has.
stephen: [00:17:00] so that’s on the list. So it’s gonna be one of those two, depending on how we feel, we might push House on Haunted Hill later just because it’s a much more well known, it’s been remade like five times,
Rhys: We have history with House on Haunted Hill too.
stephen: Yeah. Yeah. So probably white zombie ’cause it’s more sparse as far as knowledge goes and those are fun.
Rhys: Yeah.
stephen: Alright, there we go. Peeping Tom. Good one to look up. And it’s a newer one. It’s not super old. Yeah. In color without being colorized. That’s a bonus nowadays with some.
