#1 - Peeping Tom (1960)

 

Peeping Tom (1960)

(dir. Michael Powell)

 

 

Released in 1960, just two months before Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, this influential British thriller is often cited as the first slasher film. It's about a photographer who films his victims as he stabs them - with a blade attached to the end of his tripod. He has an obsession with capturing authentic fear on camera thanks to an abusive father, a scientist who studied voyeurism and fear and used his son as a test subject. Many of the hallmarks of what would come to define the slasher genre are present here: a series of murders seen from the POV of the killer, victims that are exclusively young sexually active women, and an extremely phallic murder weapon.

 

It's criminal that this film isn't as well known as Psycho, because it's arguably just as good. At release it was panned by critics and audiences who found it too shocking and controversial, to the point where it pretty much ruined Powell's career as a director. It mostly feels pretty tame today though - despite the sometimes racy subject matter, there isn't any nudity or explicit violence on screen. The implied violence is disturbing enough on its own, and there are a couple of really good tense and scary scenes. This is a very stylish film too, with sometimes garish colored lighting that reminds me very much of Mario Bava. Blood and Black Lace came out four years later, and I have to imagine that this was an influence on Bava as he made that film.

 

While you can see the influence of this film throughout basically the whole slasher subgenre, the plot in particular was aped pretty heavily for the sleazy '80s slasher Maniac (and its less sleazy but more disturbing 2012 remake starring Elijah Wood). In the 60 years since it was released, both audiences and critics have come around on it and it is now widely considered to be a classic. Although it's much closer to Hitchcock than Halloween, it's importance in the birth of the slasher genre is unmistakable.

Highly recommended!