“I never knew… one moment’s privacy…”

Mark works as a cameraman for a film studio, and at night takes dodgy pictures for a newsagent-cum-pornographer. As his evening boss tells him, people like "magazines with girls on the front covers and no front covers on the girls". That's about as saucy as you could get in 1959...

The opening scene sees a prostitute being approached by a punter who proceeds to kill her. The murderer is, of course, Mark, who filmed the whole proceedings, enlivening his "snuff" movie with scenes of before and after as well as the dirty deed itself.

Mark lives in a big old house, which he lets out to a variety of people. One of his tenants is a mousy young gal called Helen who, against all sane reasoning, takes more than a shine to our "hero". In order to impress his new paramour, he shows her film of him as a young boy, being terrified by his unseen father as part of an ongoing series of experiments (never fails to wow the ladies, that approach). The film within our film includes young Mark being woken up in the middle of the night by having light shone in his eyes, having lizards chucked at him, "saying goodbye... to mother" (at her funeral) and being given a present of a camera(?). As the film runs, Mark photographs Helen's reaction to the film.

"He wanted a record of a growing child... complete. I never knew... one moment's privacy."

Mark tells Helen he was "one big experiment in fear". "I think he learned a lot from me..."

Mark (who works in a film studio during the day, remember?) then picks up an aspiring starlet for a bit of extra "film work". Which means being stabbed through the throat by the sharpened end of Mark's camera tripod.

He secretes the body on the film set, and then films its discovery later on. By now, of course, the police have cottoned on that there's a serial killer at work - each victim has a particular look of fear on their face.

Many reviews have gone on about the object of the gaze, the significance of the camera - it’s that kind of film. At one point Helen kisses Mark, and he kisses his camera. At another she forces him to go out for the evening without his ever-present camera, and he actually appears normal. And Mark can't kill Helen's alcoholic and overbearing mother, because she's blind and she can't see what he's up to - hence no look of fear (which is what he's after).

Finally, the police close in. Mark kills another model, and eventually confesses to Helen how he has made people watch their own deaths, using a large mirror attached to the camera. Finally, the fruitcake plunges the spike into his own throat, camera flashes popping off and cine camera whirring, filming the look on his own face as he dies and completeing the work his father started...

This is the film that started it all... a taut thriller, intelligent psycho drama and very sick little puppy indeed, which understandably caused outrage when it was first released and probably knackered more than a few people's careers before they'd even started. Seek it out, and see what all the fuss is about.