Peeping Tom · reception & legacy
1960 · Michael Powell
How Peeping Tom has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
Savaged so viciously by British critics in 1960 (one famously suggested flushing it down the nearest sewer) that it effectively ended Michael Powell's British directing career — then rehabilitated in the late '70s, with Martin Scorsese championing its re-release, into acknowledged-masterpiece status.
What's debated
The eternal cinephile face-off: it came out the same year as Psycho, tackled queasily similar territory, and fans still argue over which of the two is the braver, better film — and whether critics owed Powell an apology.
Its footprint
It's the go-to reference for any film about the camera as weapon and the audience as complicit voyeur — name-checked constantly in writing about horror, slashers, and why we watch; Scorsese's advocacy made 'the film that destroyed its director' part of its legend.
Where it stands
The textbook flop-to-classic redemption story — a canonical 'you must see this' entry that cinephiles love precisely because loving it means siding with history against the critics of 1960.