Peeping Tom (1960)

Classification Issues

• Violence
  • A series of murders are implied through the sound of women's screams, although blood and violent detail is not shown.
    
• Threat and horror
  • A killer toys with his victims prior to killing them, and is shown to derive sexual excitement from his actions. No sexual activity is shown to occur. A man conducts cruel and disturbing experiments on his young son.
• Additional issues
  • Other issues include the use of moderate bad language ('bitch') and references to sex work. Brief topless and buttock nudity is shown across an array of pin-up posters and magazines in a newsagent shop.
    

Cinema classification

When the film arrived at the BBFC in 1960, seven cuts were made in order to allow the film to be classified at X (meaning no admission to under 16s). These included:
curtailing scenes of the murder of a prostitute and of Mark's suicide; 

• the removal of shots of a nude woman; 

• removal of sight of a woman's disfigured face; 

• reducing the scene in which Mark murders one of his victims, Vivian, in particular the focus on the spike that kills her; 

• removing shots and dialogue references to a woman's bruises and some dialogue cuts in a conversation between police officers; 

• reducing emphasis on the killer spike in a conversation between Mark and his love interest’s mother, and removing shots of a woman on a bed.

Public reaction

After a long and generally successful collaboration with Emeric Pressburger, Powell directed Peeping Tom in 1960 without Pressburger, creating what is now considered one of his most significant works. However, this was not the reception he received at the time of the film’s release.

The film was met with intense criticism from both critics and the public. Responses were largely negative, expressing repulsion and disgust. Much of the controversy focused on Powell’s casting of his own son, Columba, as the child Mark, while Powell himself played the authoritarian father of the hapless child who in adulthood becomes a serial killer. Powell defended the decision on the grounds that his son would deliver a more realistic performance than a professional child actor. Critics, however, were particularly disturbed by the scenes in which Mark’s father conducts psychological experiments on him as part of his study of the psychology of terror.

Powell’s assurances that Columba had enjoyed filming did little to ease the criticism. Powell himself expressed surprise at the backlash, describing the film as “a very tender film… almost a romantic film.” 

What also seemed to have disturbed reviewers was the implication that there is something sinister in the act of filming, the camera presented as a weapon, with suggestions throughout the film of voyeurism with the audience becoming complicit in the act of murder. 

Condemnation was almost universal. The Sunday Times critic Dilys Powell called the film “essentially vicious,” while other critics described it as “the sickest and filthiest film I can remember seeing.” In response to the controversy, Anglo-Amalgamated, the film’s financier, limited its UK distribution and eventually sold it. The film later resurfaced in the United States and Europe in a cut version a couple of years later. 

The negative reception severely affected Powell’s reputation. It was not until the 1970s, when filmmaker Martin Scorsese spearheaded a revival of the film, distributing it in the US, and initiating a reassessment, ultimately restoring Powell’s standing as a respected director.

Video classification

A video version of the film arrived at the BBFC in 1989, apparently the same cut version that had been classified on film. There followed a lengthy delay, as an attempt was made to locate the footage that had been cut from the original negative. This search proved fruitless and the 18 video classification was finally confirmed in 1996. In the interim, the film had been resubmitted on film in 1994 and classified 18.

Reclassification at 15

In 2007, the film was reclassified 15 ahead of a new DVD release. Under the Classification Guidelines in effect at the time, the established 18 was no longer reasonable or defensible. The lower rating was confirmed on film in 2010.