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“All this filming isn’t healthy,” says blind but perceptive Mrs. Stephens (Maxine Audley) late in Michael Powell’s resolutely disturbing Peeping Tom, and every aspect of the film’s rigorously self-reflexive construction seems to bear her out. From the opening shot of an opening eye, to the final shot of a blank screen swathed in black and blood-red gel lighting, Peeping Tom obsessively examines the social and psychological ramifications of overactive cinephilia. This situates Powell’s film as a direct precursor to later 1960s autocritiques along the lines of Federico Fellini’s 8½, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up, and Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool.

Powell and screenwriter Leo Marks originally wanted to make a film about Sigmund Freud and his theories, but word of John Huston’s upcoming Freud biopic put the kibosh on those plans. So instead they came up with the story of Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm), who works...

Stars: Emma Dark, Helen Stephens, Jane Garda, Sean Francis Mclaughlin | Written and Directed by M W Daniels

House of Lexi begins with a panoramic scan along a beautiful beach, the slow low-key score mimicking the smoothness of the camera. I loved this opening. It was calm, it was intriguing and it peaked my curiosity. The plot, without giving you too many details, follows Lexi Stone, a woman who finds herself haunted by her own past. Having lost her mother in a car accident and her baby sister at birth, Lexi see’s her sister with her, growing up alongside her, but starts to become haunted by her presence, and in turn question everything that is going on around her. It’s a very interesting premise and one I thought was conceptually original considering the simplicity of the plot at its most basic form. It was done well, and the management...