quantity" was the tagline Exclusive Films used to sell the picture to cinema managers, urging them to "Xploit the Xcitement" of the film. On subsequent re-releases, the film reverted to the title The Quatermass Experiment. The Quatermass Xperiment premièred on 26 August 1955 at the London Pavilion on Piccadilly Circus. The supporting feature was The Eric Winstone Band Show. It performed extremely well during its West End run, taking £3,500 a week at the box office. Timed to coincide with the broadcast of the television sequel, Quatermass II, the film went on general release in the United Kingdom on 20 November 1955 in a double bill with the French film Rififi. This became the most successful double bill release of 1955 in the UK. In some parts of the UK, the Watch Committees of local councils demanded certain scenes, mainly close-up shots of Carroon's victims, be removed before allowing the film to be exhibited in their jurisdictions. In the United States, Robert L. Lippert attempted to interest Columbia Pictures in distributing the film but they felt it would be competition for their own production, It Came From Beneath The Sea, which was on release at the time. Because Quatermass was unknown in the US, Lippert had renamed the film Shock!. Unable to secure a sale, he retitled it again, this time to The Creeping Unknown. United Artists eventually acquired the distribution rights in March 1956 for a fee of $125,000. The Creeping Unknown was packaged in a double bill with a Gothic horror movie called The Black Sleep, starring Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney, Jr. and Bela Lugosi. Four minutes, mainly of expository material, were cut from the runtime of the film. It opened in US theatres in June 1956 and was so successful that United Artists offered to part-fund a sequel. According to a report in Variety, published on 6 November 1956, a nine-year-old boy died of a ruptured artery at a cinema in Oak Park, Illinois during a showing of this double bill. The Guinness Book of Records subsequently recorded the incident as the only known case of an audience member dying of fright while watching a horror film. Critical response The Times newspaper critic gave the film a generally favourable assessment: "Mr. Val Guest, the director, certainly knows his business when it comes to providing the more horrid brand of thrills... The first part of this particular film