Top 10 Creepy Movie Voyeurs!

Last Updated on August 3, 2021

Don’t look now, but with the limited release of indie horror joint THEY’RE WATCHING this week, we began ruminating about all things cinematically voyeuristic. Not simple stalkers per se, but grossly perverted creeps and weirdos who tend to watch, look, spy, peep, keep close tabs on their obsessed subject before making some sort of dastardly play on their prey. You know the type, right? The kind who leer from afar with out being detected. The bush lurkers, the blind-peekers, the slick videographers. We’re exposing all of them!

Think you can see who’s coming? Peep our Top 10 Favorite Creepy Movie Voyeurs above!

#1. MARK LEWIS (PEEPING TOM)

It’s right there in the title, isn’t it folks?! That’s right, since PEEPING TOM predates Hitchcock’s more venerated peep-and-slash effort PSYCHO by a few months, Michael Powell’s powerful slasher progenitor rightfully earns the top spot. Such a creepy-cool movie, about a photographer who skulks the night, follows prostitutes, films them, and when the right time hits, unsheathes a blade from the leg of his tripod and savagely slays the foul trollops to pieces. How lovely!

#2. NORMAN BATES (PSYCHO)

Yup, when he isn’t slashing A-listers in the shower and cross-dressing in mommy’s fetid garb, old Normy likes to spy on his female tenants through hidden peep holes festooning his decrepit roadside motel. That said, I do wonder if Hitch knew star Anthony Perkins was gay. If so, that’s a pretty funny in-joke he played on us all. If not, it only adds to the rich subtext of the character, which we know, is nothing if not a psychosexual murderer capable of killing anyone in his path, regardless of gender.

#3. L.B. JEFFRIES (REAR WINDOW)

We can laugh all we want at the phallic nature of L.B. Jeffries’ gargantuan leg-cast and telephoto lens and how it correlates to the man’s overcompensation issues, but at it’s heart, REAR WINDOW is about claustrophobia, paranoia, invasion of privacy and how neighborhood voyeurism can dangerously stir the imagination. Hitchcock hits a f*cking grand-slam with all the Freudian subtexts, yet still retains a top notch piece of thrilling entertainment. Hell, I’m still spying on Miss Lonelyhearts over here!

#4. THOMAS (BLOW UP)

Somewhat redone as BLOW OUT by De Palma and Travolta years later, Antonioni’s BLOW-UP is a wonderful morality play on the nature of voyeuristic photography. See, the great David Hemmings pays a shooter in the film who likes to takes pictures of unwitting subjects, mostly sexy young British birds. However, upon blowing up his photos of a young lass he shot in a desolate park one day, he uncovers a conspiratorial plot in the background images of his photos.

#5. SY PARRISH (ONE HOUR PHOTO)

It’s still hard to grasp the fact Robin Williams is no longer with us. Yet among his eternal body of work, few performances stand out as his turn as Sy Parrish, the sad loner who becomes obsessed with the family whose photos he regularly develops. A different kind of voyeur here, one that actually communicates with and endears himself to the people he spies on. Williams nails the inner-torment, the sunken body language, the deep malaise…all bubbling into a maniacal fit of rage by the end. One of the best actors we ever saw. One last RIP Oh Captain My Captain!

#6. UNKNOWN (CACHE)

You tell me, who the hell was behind the profoundly unnerving surveillance videotapes in CACHE? Yeah, who the hell knows! Actually, one of the reasons Michael Haneke’s voyeuristic thriller is so damn powerful is because of the inherent mystery and the director’s uncompromising decision to leave the ending ambiguous. The power is in the lack of resolution, which provokes thought and stirs deep conversations among friends about what we just witnessed. All the cache in the world for this thinking man’s thriller!

#7 KARL GUNTHER (CRAWLSPACE)

Dude, look how greasy and sleazy my man Klaus Kinski is right here. I mean, this sick sumbitch is literally worming around in a CRAWLSPACE in order to peer into his female tenants’ rooms as they undress and expose their birthday suits. Dude ain’t f*cking around! CRAWLSPACE is a movie that need to be seen by all who’ve not done so, as it’s one of the most salacious voyeurism thrillers ever told. Kinski plays an Ex-Nazi who not only peers through the walls, he sets traps, Jigsaw style, around his apartment housing for women.

#8 ZEKE HAWKINS (SLIVER)

Oh Zeke, you slick Rico Suave motherf*cker! Never before had I noticed the sly inference of the surname Hawkins (as in Hawk eye), the playboy millionaire building owner in SLIVER who has entire surveillance lair built in order to spy in his sexy, often blonde, female tenants. I’m ashamed how many times I rewound the nude scenes of Sharon Stone as a wee lad in the days before the internet…I damn near broke the VCR. Trivially, the original killer in SLIVER (23 year spoiler) was supposed to be Zeke, but was changed upon test audience disdain. Berenger took the fall!

#9. GRAHAM DALTON (SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE)

Only a few years after Jimmy Spader’s gorgeously coifed feather-mullet was losing the affection of Molly Ringwald in PRETTY IN PINK, our man went rather postal in Soderbergh’s SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE. That’s right, old Graham Dalton fetishizes women via the video interviews he conducts with them, often playing out his psychosexual fantasies between the women he films. As much about watching from a distance as it is about the nature of intimacy, the pervasive aspects of technology, and the two are seemingly interlinked.

#10. MASON (VACANCY)

If DISTURBIA can be seen as the unofficial redo of REAR WINDOW, let’s call a spade a spade by saying VACANCY is the low-rent equivalent to that of PSYCHO. But since we far favor Frank Whaley over little Shia LaBeouf, not to mention Kate Beckinsale’s fine behind over Sarah Roemer’s, VACANCY actually occupies a coveted top spot. Now, I will say the first time I saw VACANCY I guessed who the culprit was in the first 20 minutes, but that doesn’t detract from the fun of the overall experience.