English film". Upon its release in the United States Variety praised the film as an "extravagant piece of science fiction. Despite its obvious horror angles, production is crammed with incident and suspense". According to Hallenbeck, many US critics found Brian Donlevy's gruff Quatermass a breath of fresh air from the earnest hero scientists of American science fiction films, such as Gene Barry's character in War of the Worlds. Other US trade reviews were mixed. Harrison's Reports felt, "the story is, of course, quite fantastic but it has enough horrific ingredients to go over with those who enjoy scary doings". Film Bulletin was not impressed. "Its strong point is an eerie atmosphere . . . but fails to build the suspense essential in this kind of film . . . Val Guest's direction is heavy with cliches." Among the critics and film historians who have reviewed The Quatermass Xperiment in the years since its release have been John Baxter who said, in Science Fiction in the Cinema (1970), "In its time, The Quatermass Experiment was a pioneering sf film... Brian Donlevy was stiff but convincing... Much of the film is saved, however, by Richard Wordsworth... one of the finest such performances since Karloff's triumphs of the Thirties". This view was echoed by John Brosnan in The Primal Screen (1991): "One of the best of all alien possession movies", he wrote, "Not since Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster has an actor managed to create such a memorable, and sympathetic, monster out of mime alone". Bill Warren in Keep Watching The Skies! (1982) found that "the buildup is slightly too long and too careful" but also said, "It's an intelligent, taut and well-directed thriller; it showcases Nigel Kneale's ideas well; it's scary and exciting. It was made by people who cared about what they were doing, who were making entertainment for adults. It is still one of the best alien invasion films". Steve Chibnall, writing for the British Film Institute's Screenonline, describes The Quatermass Xperiment as "one of the high points of British SF/horror cinema". The horror fiction writer Stephen King praised the film in his non-fiction book Danse Macabre (1991) as one of his favourite horror movies between 1950 and 1980 . The film director John Carpenter, who later collaborated with Nigel Kneale on the film Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), has claimed that The Quatermass Xperiment "had an enormous,