Peeping Tom and Psycho share more than a year.
Two of the foundational texts of voyeuristic murder movies, Peeping Tom and Psycho (both released in 1960), focus on the psychology of their killer. The same mother-dependent stress that the detectives portrayed in Mindhunter were beginning to crack ran rampant through cinema’s creepiest boys.
Violence towards women is sadly nothing new in life or on screen, but the way these films portray it – as driven by something deeper than rage or sex – was special. It was damning of something more than primal emotion.
Luís Azevedo and Ricardo Pinto de Magalhães put together a beautifully-cut video essay weaving the two together, finding aesthetic similarities in shadow and camera placement along with the obvious narrative and character parallels.