20 Serial Killer Movies You Must See Before You Die

8. Peeping Tom (1960)

It's terrible to think that Peeping Tom, one of the best films of the '60s, was also the one that ended its director's career. Michael Powell's grim meditation on a London-based serial killer (played by a perfectly cast Carl Boehm) was met with distain upon its original release, but has since been reappraised as a masterpiece of British cinema. Go figure. Unveiled the same year as Alfred Hitchcock's seminal work Psycho (what a year for horror films, huh?), the conceit driving Peeping Tom depicts the life of a disturbed murderer named Mark Lewis, who gets his kicks from filming his victims using a portable character - all women - to capture their dying expressions as he brutally murders them. As both an exploration into the mind of a serial killer and an unforgettably freaky entertainment to boot, Peeping Tom is bonafide triumph. You can't shake this one off, and - all these years later - it feels bold and progressive in ways other movies simply don't.