











































The Cinematic Killer: 
Cameras and Peeping Tom

The history of horror film is 
the history of fear. The genre 

examines themes as miniscule as 
personal repressed anxieties or as 
massive as an entire culture’s fears. 
Horror has the ability to make its 
viewers scared of routine activities, 
such as the infamous shower scene 
in Psycho, or even children’s toys, 
like Chucky in Child’s Play. The 
range of iconic horror villains, 
scenes, and plots proves anything 
can be designed to be scary. 
Michael Powell’s 1960 Peeping Tom pushes the boundaries of this assertion, that 
anything can be designated as terrifying, by making a camera its antagonist. The 
film stars Karl Boehm as Mark Lewis, a disturbed photographer and filmmaker 
with a fetish for filming the beautiful women he murders. In the final moments 
of Peeping Tom, Mark asks, “Do you know what the most frightening thing in the 
world is?” and ultimately answers his own question: “It’s fear” (01:37:21-01:38:15). 
By the end of Peeping Tom, Mark’s declaration is confirmed, as director Michael 
Powell successfully assigns a camera as an antagonist by showing its victims their 
own fear through a mirror attached to the camera as the victims are murdered. 
Powell’s depiction of a serial killer filmmaker comes at a time of groundbreaking 
developments in camera technology, which revolutionized documentary film. 
Further, he allowed the camera to become the antagonist by giving it agency. 
Because of this portrayal, Peeping Tom has contributed to academic discourses on 
cinematic representations of voyeurism and psychoanalysis. The camera functions as 
a monster because it manipulates the portrayal of Mark’s victims, making it a killer 
of reality and the literal and figurative murderer of the victims.
 The film begins through a camera’s gaze and follows a prostitute up a set 
of stairs, when she inexplicably screams. The following scene reveals that she has 

ABSTRACT
In Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, cameras 
are delegated the role of antagonist. 
Cameras become the movie’s monsters, 
murdering women and their identities. 
These murders reflect flaws of and 
anxieties preoccupied with technological 
advancements in documentary film 
during the middle of the 20th century. 
The terror cameras cause in Peeping Tom 
showcases the danger in believing in an 
objective lens. 

Madison Wilde, Florida State University

1
Digital Literature Review, vol. 4 (2017).     Ball State University. All Rights Reserved.
Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce critical edition to dlr@bsu.edu.



been murdered. Mark Lewis films the aftermath for a personal documentary 
whose subjects are women that he kills. This is merely his pastime; he formally 
works as a film crew member and a pin-up photographer. One night, Mark meets 
Helen, his tenant and neighbor, and invites her into his apartment upstairs. Mark 
shows Helen experimental home videos, filmed by his psychologist father, of Mark 
experiencing trauma as a child. Helen is disturbed by this but still likes Mark, and 
they eventually begin dating. Still, this does not satisfy Mark’s urges. He stays late 
at the studio one night to film Vivian, a stand-in actress on the movie set he is 
working on. Vivian becomes a part of Mark’s documentary as he exposes a knife on 
the leg of a tripod and stabs her throat. He locks her in a trunk, and she is found 
on set the following day. Detectives visit the set to question everyone, and Mark 
films it for his movie. Mark repeats the same process with Milly, one of his pin-up 
models. Afterward, Mark arrives home to find Helen watching one of his murder 
movies. Mark explains to Helen that he captures ultimate fear by attaching a mirror 
to his camera so the women he impales must watch their own deaths. The film 
concludes with Mark filming himself committing suicide with the same technique.
 Cameras become their own characters in Peeping Tom through 
personification, which is achieved through Mark’s relationship with cameras. 
When referencing them, he uses humanizing language. While interrogating 
Mark, Chief Inspector Gregg asks Mark if anyone was with him at a specific time. 
Mark responds, “No sir. Just my…just my camera” (00:59:44-00:59:51). When 
Mark is with his camera, he is not alone. Mark’s relationship with cameras, and 
his accompanying violent fetish involving them, has a traumatic foundation. His 
father, scientist A.N. Lewis, put Mark in fearful situations and filmed Mark’s 
reaction as a case study on fear and the human nervous system. Mark’s childhood 
was spent as the object of documentation, and cameras were always present in his 
rearing. Even though cameras were a source of discomfort, their critical presence 
in his upbringing made them sentimental for Mark—and even companions. His 
camera acts as a comfort blanket, reassuring him as he commits the murders. In 
a moment of apparent anxiety, Mark strokes his camera. Cameras receive Mark’s 
affection, despite being an accessory to his abuse. In Mark’s life, cameras are not 
purely harmful—they are his guardians. The cameras’ aversive stability forms the 
basis for an unhealthy relationship between them and Mark. The enduring presence 
of cameras maintains Mark’s relationship with them and ruins any development 
of a sense of privacy, which Dr. Rosan, psychologist and Mark’s late father’s friend, 
points out. The oversaturation of cameras in Mark’s childhood has not only caused 
him to have an emotional dependence on cameras, but cameras themselves control 
Mark and have changed the way he participates in the world. 

2Madison Wilde



 Through its intricate relationship with Mark, the camera becomes a complex 
character ranging from Mark’s friend to a monster. Mark’s connection with his 
camera is very personal, and he is rarely seen without it. His entire identity revolves 
around cameras. Mark’s violent fetish and both his jobs, adult picture photographer 
and studio camera operator, involve cameras. Even when Mark is without his 
camera, like when he is on his date with Helen, he surrenders to his voyeuristic 
urges for any provocative sights. He stares at a kissing couple with an intense, 
disturbing gaze until Helen draws him back in. He is not a casual, passive onlooker. 
His stares are purposeful and shameless, like a camera’s intentional gaze, because 
cameras taught Mark to view in their remorseless manner. The camera is able to 
condition Mark because Powell allows the camera to transcend its human user by 
depicting it as conscious.
 From the start, the camera performs menacing actions. In the iconic 
opening, a camera’s viewfinder gazes on a prostitute named Dora as she picks up 
a customer and they relocate to a room. In the room, Dora screams and stares 
at something horrifying, but viewers do not know what the source of her terror 
is. Film critic Catherine Zimmer analyzes cameras throughout Peeping Tom, 
paying close attention to the opening, in “The Camera’s Eye: Peeping Tom and 
Technological Perversion.” In the scene when Dora screams, “[t]he implication is 
that the camera is the hidden voyeur, not the man who approaches her” (Zimmer 
37). The scene is captured through the camera’s perspective, armed with crosshairs 
evocative of a weapon’s viewfinder, which make the intentions appear malicious. 
The wicked characterization of cameras continues as the film develops, and they 
assist Mark in all of his murderous escapades. Mark lures in women and murders 
them by impaling his victims with a tripod leg turned knife whilst filming them. 
The camera has a mirror attached, so victims can see the camera’s perspective on 
their murder as it happens. The highlighting of the camera’s perspective cultivates 
its role as humanized character. In the film’s finale, Mark references the cameras as 
if they are his friends, asking Helen to, “Watch them all say goodbye, one by one” 
(01:39:23-01:40:17). Zimmer argues that in this finale, “The camera has, like Mark 
Lewis, become the monster” (48). However, throughout the film, the camera has 
control over Mark. A Freudian psychosexual analysis of Mark’s traumatic childhood 
history with cameras, his overpowering need to film murders, and the fact that all 
his victims are beautiful women suggests a fetish. This is furthered by the phallic 
imagery insinuated by the murder object, a tripod leg for impalement. A person 
does not control their fetish; it is their fetish that controls them. Mark literally dies 
for his fetish.
 The camera is not a monster like Mark Lewis; the camera is Mark Lewis’s 

3Madison Wilde



monster. Independent of its relationship with Mark, cameras have monstrous 
qualities. Cameras reduce the world to the confines of its lens, killing reality.  It 
is also as if the camera makes choices when representing reality. In Peeping Tom, 
these choices are “constantly highlighted” (Zimmer 36). In the beginning moments 
of the film, the camera’s gaze follows Mark as he throws out a packet of film. The 
shot lingers on the trashcan, as if the trashcan is an imperative element of the 
unfolding story. The trashcan is not crucial to the purpose of Peeping Tom, but 
what the camera must forgo to capture it is. By focusing on one thing, the camera 
must ignore others. The camera’s inability to divulge all details while being able 
to select which features are revealed gives it a godlike power. With this power, 
the camera uses its limited domain and conscious gaze to link “technical and 
ideological position” (Hawthorn 303). Peeping Tom’s opening has been described as 
an “ideological establishing shot,” the quick sequence illustrating the main points of 
the film, exemplifying the camera as a weapon and beginning to provoke questions 
about viewership (Hawthorn 305).
 A camera’s gaze is influential enough to alter reality and even construct new 
meaning. Despite a filmmaker having positive intentions, the unavoidable visual 
incompleteness of a camera’s perspective is powerful. A camera’s restricted scope 
never grants a filmmaker’s wholesome hopes to show cinematic truth. Mark’s father, 
A.N. Lewis, hoped his exploitative films would contribute a benefit to the medical 
community larger than the detriment it would bring to his son. Independent of his 
experiment’s abusive qualities, A.N. Lewis’s films had a constructive purpose. Still 
Mark is a single person, so this study cannot substitute for the experiences of all 
people. However, most viewers do not consider the picture as incomplete, so many 
ethical implications accompany cinematic accounts of the real. A camera’s view 
has the power to express truth, as passive viewers erroneously consume its images 
as fact. Misperceived truth corrupts reality, with most of this burden placed on 
recorded subjects. The misconception that a film’s images are irrefutable, reliable 
sources is a common problem in documentary films. Fabricated reality is mistakenly 
perceived as real, and the identity of its subjects, real people, are murdered. This is 
expressed in Peeping Tom through literal killing. Mark’s victims in Peeping Tom are 
women who, according to distinguished film critic and academic Elisabeth Bronfen, 
“believe [they] can control and master the masculine gaze” (Bronfen 62). Their 
naïve perception that they can control the camera makes these women vulnerable. 
These women are too trusting of the camera. Vivian goes as far as saying, “I 
do feel alone in front of it” (00:39:50-00:40:01). Their identities are killed as a 
consequence.
 Peeping Tom motivates its viewers to question what happens when people 

4Madison Wilde



are turned into commodities. Unlike Mark’s personal documentary camera, Peeping 
Tom’s secondary cameras have a commercial purpose. The photography and studio 
cameras have the same ultimate objective of transforming subjects into objects 
by making them a commodity. The stars of these cameras’ gazes are given a new 
existence, one that aims to be economically desirable. Models and actresses agree 
to abandon their notion of self under contractual stipulations to be compensated, 
and the assumption that spectators know what they are visually consuming is 
simulated. An audience may be immersed into the thoughtfully crafted world, but 
reality is promptly restored when the lights come on and the movie is over. Mark’s 
victims are a prostitute, an actress, and a model. Other than being beautiful, the 
main characteristic that unites Mark’s victims is their willingness to sell themselves 
despite possible consequences. In the film’s beginning seconds, the camera gazes at 
Dora as she stares into a store’s display of dismembered mannequins. Completeness 
cannot be assembled using the mannequin’s fragmented parts. Moments later, the 
same thing will happen to her. Her individuality will be dismembered, as she is 
immortalized as a one-dimensional victim in newspapers and the camera’s film. The 
lack of complete identity will transform her into a mannequin, an object able to be 
fashioned to satisfy one’s desires. 
 In contrast, despite being like the rest of his victims—young, beautiful, and 
powerlessly alone with him—Mark spares Helen’s life. Powell always shows a 
barefaced Helen in great lighting, contrasting her chiaroscuro-lit costars. Unlike 
the film’s victims—Dora, Vivian, and Milly—Helen does not attempt to alter her 
image through makeup or profession, which may be one reason Mark pardons her. 
Furthermore, she is not as naïve as Mark’s victims and is skeptical of the camera’s 
gaze. When Mark tries to film Helen, she appears threatened. She responds to 
his traumatic home videos with discomfort and questions, demanding, “I like to 
understand what I’m shown” (00:25:00-00:25:12). She understands the intricacies 
behind a creative composition because, just like Mark, Helen creates a fabricated 
reality. However, unlike Mark, Helen’s reality is never taken as real as it only exists 
within the realm of the children’s novels that she writes. Mark’s medium is film, 
a visual surrogate for authentic reality, so it is often mistaken as truth. This unites 
them; nevertheless, Mark’s reality comes with more risks.
 Of the film’s three cameras—Mark’s documentary camera, his photography, 
and the studio’s camera—Mark’s 16mm documentary camera is the primary star 
and subject of a fascinating history. Mark’s conscious camera can be considered 
his costar, assisting him on all of his exploits. The 16mm camera was introduced 
during World War II, which lends it a “legacy of violent trauma” (Zimmer 47). 
Compared to previous technology, 16mm cameras are small, lightweight, and 

5Madison Wilde



portable. This allows them the ability to be at the forefront of action or, in the case 
of Peeping Tom, to perform the action. Their capabilities extended documentary film 
techniques. For the first time, documentary films did not have to be staged, as a 
camera could be brought out in real settings to record real people. Still, all genuine 
elements did not necessarily yield genuine results.
 Around the same time as the advent of synchronized sound cameras and the 
production of Peeping Tom, two important documentary techniques were coming 
to the forefront—direct cinema and cinéma vérité. They both share an aspiration, 
debatably the goal of all documentary film, to accurately represent truth. However, 
they go about it in very different ways. Direct cinema created the infamous “fly-on-
the-wall” technique, in which documentary filmmakers record their surroundings 
without disturbing them to try to capture a situation as an objective account. 
Direct cinema operates under the assumption that truth can be passively observed 
without the influence of a camera. Explained by Bill Nichols, documentary film 
study’s pioneering scholar, where direct cinema tries to portray an “absolute or 
untampered truth,” cinéma vérité only attempts “the truth of an encounter” (184). 
Cinéma vérité, literally meaning truthful cinema, “reveals the reality of what 
happens when people interact in the presence of a camera” (184). It acknowledges 
the relationship of power between people and cameras, so filmmakers try their best 
to create situations that will draw out truth. Brian Winston, one of the first British 
journalists to discuss documentary ethics, once said, “the only thing direct cinema 
and cinéma vérité have in common is their ‘equipment’” (qtd. in Zimmer 40). 
Despite having very different techniques, they face the same issues. Both deal with 
the unavoidable influence of subjectivity, which muddles truth. 
 The problems of both direct cinema and cinéma vérité are illustrated in 
Peeping Tom. Mark’s documentary lies somewhere in-between the two techniques. 
Sometimes, he adopts a direct cinema approach, passively filming situations around 
him, like the aftermath of Dora the prostitute’s murder. Inevitably, Mark becomes 
an active part of his film when someone asks him what paper he is filming for 
(00:05:19-00:05:30). The camera’s inability to be ignored is where direct cinema 
fails. Usually, Mark’s filming serves as a commentary on cinéma vérité. He does 
not merely reveal how people react in the presence of a camera; he shows their 
interaction with the camera itself. Unlike other documentary techniques, cinéma 
vérité is very upfront about the unequal distribution of power. However, that 
does not necessarily make the imbalance any better. In trying to draw out the 
truth through techniques like the interview, filmmakers sometimes create a truth. 
Interview questions that lead to desired answers is an example of this. No tactic can 
perfectly construct power equality, as a human will always be doing the strategizing. 

6Madison Wilde



In Peeping Tom, this power imbalance is blatantly demonstrated through Mark’s 
ability to take lives through his filmmaking.
 The world of a film, documentary film included, is carefully crafted through 
choices behind the camera, which Peeping Tom often reminds its audience. While 
posing for Mark, Milly asks him if he can hide her bruises in the photograph 
(00:10:25-00:10:34). A few moments later, the camera shot gazes at a beautiful 
woman standing by a window sill. The woman turns her head and reveals a facial 
deformity. Prior to her turning her head, the camera could not see the deformity 
and, therefore, it did not exist in the audience’s universe. In reference to her facial 
deformity, she jokingly asks Mark if he can remove her bruises too. Mark is 
mesmerized by the woman and asks to film her with an obsessive demeanor. When 
he does film her, the frame only includes her eyes. Once again, her deformity is 
erased by the camera’s limited perspective. Nevertheless, both of these instances of 
incomplete representation are intentional. A moment of the camera’s will to omit 
can be noticed in Mark’s childhood videos, but only on a re-viewing of the film. In 
these videos, in which Mark’s father intentionally imposes fear on his child, a light 
can be seen. Helen questions it: “What’s the light? Well I suppose it’s the camera” 
(00:22:45-00:22:50). This light is familiar to viewers, as it can also be seen in the 
murder footage. It is not until the final moments of the film that the light’s source 
is revealed: the mirror. 
 Editing is another critical factor in devising the world of a film. A clever 
sequence in Peeping Tom that emphasizes editing’s power to make meaning is 
when a slice of cake is shown as a voice commands, “Cut!” The word, “cut” seems to 
refer to the slice of cake until the scene promptly cuts to the studio, revealing the 
diegetic source of the commanded “cut” (00:30:11-00:30:15). While a camera limits 
perspective to select the meaning, editing is the intentional sequence strategized to 
design meaning. In the editing process, humans are the intelligent creators. In the 
case of documentary film, ethical filmmakers strive to, as best as possible, recreate 
a situation without the addition of motivated changes. In the filming process, a 
person guides a camera’s gaze, but he or she is working within the camera’s world 
and ultimately under its authority. The camera’s limited scope paired with the 
assumption that it does not lie is a dangerous combination. A camera is confined 
to its own frame of view, so it exploits the very concept of reality. Because of this, 
documentary filmmakers will always fail at perfectly representing truth, even when 
they so desperately attempt it. 
 The literal camera of Peeping Tom illustrates the danger of representation to 
its documentary subjects-turned-victims. The camera is a monster that uses Mark, 
the tripod, and a mirror to achieve its goals. The literal murder from the impaling 

7Madison Wilde



tripod is a metaphor for the identity slaughter common in cinematic portrayals. 
The function of a tripod itself is to create a stable frame, akin to the way we actually 
view the world. Steady shots allow film’s viewers to sink into its universe and 
forget they are watching a fabricated reality or, in the case of documentary film, 
a mediated reality. In documentary films, stability lends to the illusion of truth. 
Mark’s victims are literally being killed by a tripod, the camera’s tool for delusional 
truth. The believable feigning of truth makes the accuracy of portrayals more 
critical, yet the camera’s limited abilities do not allow for the perfect portrayal. The 
attached mirror is an attempt at transparency between the camera and its victims. 
The power imbalance is still present, as subjects cannot control their representation. 
However, it allows for the victims to have a firsthand account of their murder. 
Victims are cursed to see their murder as it occurs without the power to escape it. 
Subjects of cinéma vérité are given the freedom to candidly exhibit their character 
for a camera, but their domain, the camera’s scope, is limited. As a result, subjects 
ultimately persist as objects. Ultimately, Michael Powell uses Mark’s conscious 
camera as a platform to point out the problems with representing reality and 
personal identity in film. When Peeping Tom concludes, Mark’s 16mm camera is 
the most threatening character. During the film’s climax, one detective comforts 
the other two by saying, “It’s only a camera.” Another detective responds with fear, 
“Only?” (01:38:40-01:38:50). 

WORKS CITED

8Madison Wilde



Bronfen, Elisabeth. “Killing Gazes, Killing in The Gaze: On Michael 
 Powell’s Peeping Tom.” Gaze and Voice as Love Objects, edited by 
 Renata Salecl, Duke University Press Books, 1996, pp. 59-89. https://

books.google.com/books?id=ZOf1CObn_-UC&lpg=PP1&dq=gaze%20
and%20books%20as%20love%20objects&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=gaze%20
and%20books%20as%20love%20objects&f=false

 Accessed 2 Dec. 2016.

Hawthorn, Jeremy. “Morality, Voyeurism, and ‘Point of View’: Michael Powell’s 
 Peeping Tom.” Nordic Journal of English Studies, vol. 2, no. 2, 2003, pp. 
 303–324. http://ojs.ub.gu.se/ojs/index.php/njes/article/view/223. Accessed 
 15 Dec. 2016.

Johnson, William. “‘Peeping Tom’: A Second Look.” Film Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 3, 
 1980, pp. 2–10. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1212185. Accessed 2 
 Dec. 2016.

Nichols, Bill. “How Can We Describe the Modes of Documentary Film?” 
 Introduction to Documentary, 2nd ed., Indiana University Press, 2010, pp. 
 179-94. 

Peeping Tom. Directed by Michael Powell, Anglo-Amalgamated Film 
 Distributors, 16 May 1960. iTunes, https://itunes.apple.com/gb/movie/peepi

ng-tom-1960/id896112734. 

Zimmer, Catherine. “The Camera’s Eye: Peeping Tom and Technological 
 Perversion.”  Horror Film: Creating and Marketing Fear, edited by Steffen 
 Hantke, University of Mississippi Press, 2004, pp. 35-51, http://works.bep

ress.com/catherinezimmer/1/. Accessed 2 Dec. 2016.

9Madison Wilde

http://ojs.ub.gu.se/ojs/index.php/njes/article/view/223
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1212185
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/movie/peepi  ng-tom-1960/id896112734. 
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/movie/peepi  ng-tom-1960/id896112734. 
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https://works.bep  ress.com/catherinezimmer/1/

