Reviewed - Peeping Tom:"The only really satisfactory way to dispose of Peeping Tom would be to shovel it up and flush it down the nearest sewer. Even then the stench would remain."

Derek Hill's notorious review of Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960) - the most vituperative among an avalanche of appalled notices - helped cast the great British director into an inescapable professional obscurity. In the years that followed, critics, eager to make recompense, have slightly over-praised this singular psychological thriller. Following the grim career of a disturbed young man who films women

as he skewers them to death, the picture is a tad too bludgeoning in its engagement with cinema

as voyeurism. But, though not among Powell's very best, it remains a notably unsettling entertainment and fully deserves this beautiful reissue, which features an incisive commentary from Ian Christie and a touching introduction by Martin Scorsese. Surprisingly, the disc is not sticky with grey tea and the grease from cheap boarding houses.