What the Peeper Saw

This underrated '70's psycho-thriller is aided by a strong cast, which includes Mark Lester(of OLIVER! fame) as the disturbed youngster, Britt Ekland as the terrified stepmother, Hardy Kruger as the boy's well-meaning, but clueless father, and Lilli Palmer as a seemingly level-headed psychologist. Admittedly, it's little more than THE BAD SEED with a sex change and a few kinky, voyeuristic sequences thrown in for good measure, but the wonderful cast has done wonders with their roles, particularly Lester who gives a startlingly mature and downright chilling performance as the evil child. After seeing him go at it as the little stepson from Hell, it's hard to believe that this is the same little boy who captured our hearts in the award-winning musical "OLIVER!". It takes a good actor to play two wildly different roles so convincingly, and that's Lester. After seeing him in these two films alone, I'm convinced he's one of the finest child actors of all time! After doing some research, I've discovered that the magnificent Lester has retired from show business and is now an osteopath. The medical profession's gain is our loss.

Twelve year old Marcus is a pure bad seed.The boy has the history of animal abuse,sexual perversion and possibly murder.His mother died mysteriously during so-called tragic accident.Marcus is a manipulative and cruel boy.His rich father Paul marries Elise played by Britt Ekland.Marcus becomes obsessed with her and tragic occurrences follow."Night Child" aka "What the Peeper Saw" is an unsettling psychological thriller with few controversial set-pieces including the scenes where Elise strips in front of Marcus,shots of Marcus caressing Elise's breasts and finally short bed scene between Elise and Marcus.The acting is decent and Britt Ekland is truly one of the most beautiful women ever seen on screen.Be sure to track down an uncut version!

The basic plot of "What the Peeper Saw" is very simple and has been done several times before. The story revolves around a widower whose much younger and ravishingly beautiful new wife discovers that her 12-year-old stepson is a troubled and deeply disturbed kid. While her husband (a not-so-successful writer) is often away on business, Elise finds out that Mark has been expelled from school for peeping at young couples and torturing/killing defenseless little animals, and at home he cheerfully continues with lying, stealing, peeping, and manipulating. She even gathers evidence that his mother's death wasn't so accidental as it looked.

A typically formulaic "bad seed" thriller, in other words, and thus the movie needed something extra and much spicier to stand out in the crowd of early 70s exploitation shockers. Luckily, the British crew collaborated with several notorious Italians - and specifically Andrea Bianchi ("Cry of a Prostitute", "Burial Ground") - who knew a thing or two about controversy. "What the Peeper Saw" became infamous for its sequences in which the stunning Britt Ekland (29 at the time) strips nude in front of child actor Mark Lester (14 years of age), passionately kisses him, and crawls into bed naked next to him. Without a doubt the ultimate wet dream of every horny male teenager (I, for one, wouldn't have minded taking Lester's place) but the UK's censorship committee was appalled - duh - and commanded to withdraw the film from circulation. The film became available again in a heavily cut version of barely 72 minutes, without all the supposedly perverse and provocative underage sex footage. Censorship people are no fun at all!

Controversial or not, "What the Peeper Saw" (aka "Night Child") isn't such a great film. Most of the time, you'll just be frustrated and yelling at the screen for Britt Ekland to get away from her worthless husband and his creepy freak of a kid. The build-up is also very standard, with the doofus husband not believing poor Elise and defending his psycho son because he went through a traumatizing experience. Yeah, yeah. Fortunately, the last 15 minutes are terrific with Ekland's character going completely cuckoo, and the script cleverly hinting that she may have been all along. And thanks to the abrupt and unforeseeable shock-ending, it comes fully recommended after all.

"What the Peeper Saw" is much more of a psychological drama than a horror film, or even a thriller. It focuses heavily on the antagonistic relationship between Elise (Britt Ekland), the new wife of an older man, successful author Paul (Hardy Kruger), and her stepson Marcus (Mark Lester of "Oliver!" fame). They initially seem to get along all right, but Elise becomes increasingly frustrated by this enigmatic, aloof kid, who acts much older than his actual age. She comes to suspect that he had murdered his biological mother Sarah (Colette Giacobine), and now has similar designs on her.

As directed by James Kelley ("The Beast in the Cellar"), you can't ever expect a lot of tension in this film. That doesn't seem to be its primary concern. It DOES have a sexual charge about it, however. Hell, the uncut version opens with a scene of nudity. The evolving relationship between our heroine and bratty antagonist does play up this quality. (Still, it must be noted that you don't ever see the kid indulge in the act of peeping on screen.) The single most memorable sequence involves the two main characters exchanging clothes for information, as Elise strips in front of Marcus in order to get some truths out of him.

And this kid is one truly cagey character. One thing you can expect is that the scenario turns into one of "he said, she said", and Elise is understandably flustered that she can get almost nobody to believe her about this bad seed.

Ekland is no great shakes as a dramatic actress, but she just looks so damn fine that some viewers probably won't mind very much. (She DOES give the proceedings an earnest effort.) Kruger is fine as the dad, but the film belongs to young Lester, who's quite amusing throughout. Lilli Palmer and Harry Andrews are excellent in special guest appearances as a psychiatrist and school headmaster.

The out of nowhere violent ending is downright hilarious, even if it's probably not intended to be that way.

The Italian version is credited to Andrea Bianchi ("Strip Nude for Your Killer", "Burial Ground").

Six out of 10.

Its a well directed movie and needless to say it must have been a tight rope-walking to handle the taboo subject which must been akin to playing with fireball given the fact that movie debuted on screens way back in 1972. The movie seems more of psychological thriller as it involves quite a bit of mind-games.

Mark Lester as Marcus does a wonderful job. His character seems more like Damien from The Omen and gets to mouth intelligent lines. He looked on higher side for being portrayed aged twelve.

Britt Ekland gets the meaty bit of the role. Portrays the dilemma of the character quite well. Though the character of Elise starts off as a compassionate mother but as the movie progresses it evolves to be victim of Marcus and then leading to inquisitive wife attempting to unearth the truth.

Hardy Kruger seemed to have underplayed the of role of Paul as torn between the two ends. Otherwise his character had a variety of dimensions to it and certainly could have elevated the grey shades of it.

Narrative begins to build up as the movie progresses. Interesting parts are moves Marcus and Elise to play on the chess board attempting to out-beat each other. The part where Elise begins to get clues about the death is interestingly directed (the jigsaw picture), though might seem primitive my todays standards. The vivid imaginations of Elise comes across quite okay.

And yes, the end was well justified so don't miss the last 60-seconds of the movie.